applause

I had a student who was extremely shy and reserved around me. In the beginning we were struggling to find the way to each other. The classes were enjoyable, for both teacher and student, but there was always a bit of awkwardness in the air. He was not relaxed, no matter what I tried, and this made me nervy too. Slowly, however, I discovered he simply adored pop culture. Suddenly I saw a way! I started to incorporate more and more films, songs, and stories of celebrities into the various tasks and topics I wanted to cover. Lady Gaga, was, for example, one of our favorites. We did jigsaw puzzles with her lyrics, performative situational dialogues with her personas, and analytic discussions of her clips and songs, touching upon themes from gender roles,  through violence, to contemporary culture and manipulation. After a couple of months, we became quite fond of these meetings and regretted that the course had to end eventually.

A couple of months after I stopped tutoring him, I sent him a short email to catch up on how his life was going. Just out of fun, I signed the letter as Beyonce, as a reference to 'Telephone', one of the videos we analyzed together. Two days later, this is what I received from this once-unresponsive guy:

Hi Beyoncé
omg + thanks for writing me! how ru? ur featuring in telephone was so fuckin gr8!!! had amazing days together! I hope you enjoyed it the way I did honey. LOVE performin sou mach ya kno'. what u think of my new songs? #APPLAUSE #VENUS #MANiCURE you think are full of S.E.X? HOPE SO! S.E.X is A.R.T.!!! can't wait for your opinion. #DoWhatUWantAtMidnight

Lady Gaga

Beyonce fan

If I had success in my teaching career, this is definitely one. Way to go, Lady Gaga*!


* The color of the text pays tribute to Lady Gaga's favorite shades according to her wiki.

dear john

When I teach writing, may that be academic or business, I like to demonstrate the importance of something students like to hate and neglect: punctuation. After this task they usually take it more seriously. (Of course, to know how to use punctuation is another story, but learning always starts with getting interested to make efforts.) So, let's give it a go, shall we? Please read the following excerpt, lacking punctuation, and indicate the appropriate punctuation marks.

dear john i want a man who knows what love is all about you are generous kind thoughtful people who are not like you admit to being useless and inferior you have ruined me for other men i yearn for you i have no feelings whatsoever when we are apart i can be forever happy will you let me be yours marsha

Are you done? Was it easy, was it difficult? Usually, depending on the level of the competence, it takes more or less time for the students but everyone manages. It is just occasional that someone stops, looks up at me suspiciously, and cries out that I fooled them. Because it is ambiguous. It has two solutions. The love letter you most probably made this text into (misled by the color of the post) is just one of the solutions. See? Depending on how you use punctuation, you may end up in a break-up with someone you (would have) wished to marry.

Dear John, I want a man who knows what love is all about. You are generous, kind, thoughtful. People who are not like you admit to being useless and inferior. You have ruined me for other men. I yearn for you. I have no feelings whatsoever when we are apart. I can be forever happy. Will you let me be yours? Marsha

Dear John, I want a man who knows what love is. All about you are generous, kind, thoughtful people who are not like you. Admit to being useless and inferior. You have ruined me. For other men I yearn. For you I have no feelings whatsoever. When we are apart, I can be forever happy. Will you let me be? Yours, Marsha

Love it or hate it, admit to being impressed! :-)

you think you are...

Here's a comprehension task I love to give my students, mostly in academic courses but it would also fit the business setting. Try it and see how you like it. The instructions are simple: read the excerpt quickly and answer the questions below. It shouldn't take more than a minute. Go!

A builder, leaning out of a van, shouting ’nice legs’ to a nurse cycling by. The same nurse arrives at work, and casually mentions this to a senior doctor. The doctor says, ’I’d never say that’. The doctor has two grown-up children who are 22 and 30. One is a sergeant in the army; the other is training to be a hairdresser. The doctor divorced last year, and is currently dating someone.

Statements	true	false	don’t know
1. The builder was driving the van.
2. There was at least one man in the van.
3. Not every man mentioned would shout ’Nice legs’ to a passer-by.
4. The doctor is no longer living with his wife.
5. The doctor has a girlfriend.
6. The doctor’s son is in the army.
7. The younger child is training to be a hairdresser.
8. At some point a man spoke to a woman.
9. At least two of the people mentioned are men.
10. A woman is shouted at.

So, what were your answers? Don't cheat, don't look down here until you are done.

Well, surprise-surprise: to each of the questions the correct answer is "don't know." Nothing is specified in the text. Whatever you thought (the doctor being male, the nurse being female, the characters being heterosexual, etc.) all come from your stereotypes. Read again! See? It is all in our head.

And I say, our head, because no matter in what context and with what group I used the task, there was no one that ticked all ten correctly, neutrally. Not even those who considered themselves progressive and free of gender stereotypes. Including myself.

You think you are not biased. Think again.

once upon a time

In an extraordinary context, even the most boring task can be fun. Imagine having to practice the holy transformation of affirmative into negative and interrogative. Imagine an adult learner that has difficulties adopting to new knowledge and is stuck on failure. What do you do? 

What I did was blindfolding her and taking her into wonderland. She found herself in the middle of a tale -- an eagle talking to a fox -- which was so fantastic that she forgot to worry and started to enjoy. This is the story she made up between a certain Ms Eagle and a naughty boy named Foxy.

regardless of the number of mistakes

Last month I introduced to you Danijela from Slovenia, who works abroad and uses English as her primary means of communication. In the frames of an informal interview, she shared her experiences as a foreigner, pointing out some difficulties in communication but overall painting a very positive picture of working and living abroad. Her farewell message was clearly an encouragement for everyone who is considering to try their luck far from their home town. 

As our second TEA guest, I brought you Bori from Hungary, who has been an enthusiastic traveler, tasting life in Switzerland, the United States, and currently in Germany.

Welcome, Bori. Thanks for joining us.

Sure, I live for tea! 

Great, same here! Could you share with the community why you decided to leave your country?

I was always a big fan of travelling around the world. It makes you become a lot opener to different cultures and people. I was offered a position within the company at a different location. Needless to say, I've jumped on the opportunity and started planning my new life in Frankfurt.

How do you feel as an expat?

GOOD! Lots of new experience and challenge to be faced, I'm enjoying them so far.

What languages do you use in your every day life?

I'd say 55 % English, 25 % German, 17 % Hungarian and 3% French.

Wow, quite many! I guess, after this, you would say language is not a barrier and you manage to communicate with the locals.

As a matter of fact: NO. And I don't really mean the situations when you just want the hairdresser to understand what haircut you fancy (though you could end up having an unexpected look :-) or you want to order a pizza (the worst thing that could happen to you is that you receive a Hawaii instead of a Pomodoro. :-). I mean more those cases when you have to break the walls and get closer to a person - language can be a very tough barrier.  Let me just come up with an example that happened to me recently. Our company has bought a smaller German software company. I'm working on their integration project where we're trying to set up their processes in our system. I had several meetings with different combinations of people - a key factor to be mentioned here: the language of the meetings was English. I'm not saying that we could not get anywhere but it was really hard to progress on the open questions. For some reason I had to arrange a separate meeting with the same individuals from the acquired company, only me and them. I told them that I'm happy to go with German, though I can't guarantee that I'll be super perfect in their language. From this point on, the doors were open, we went through all the questions quickly and the people were amazingly happy to share their issues and ideas. Using German was a real Ice-Breaker and made me able to build up very good connections to these people. 

So this means that Germans don't really like to speak English, even if it doesn't mean they don't speak. What advice would you give to someone considering to live abroad?

The first thing coming to my mind if you talk about foreign languages is that you have to make sure you're not shy and you do try to use the language regardless of the number of mistakes. Being shy and counting the failures and the things you don't know in a foreign language can discourage you from improving your skills. And at the same time: don't forget to take your passport, you never know in what country you end up the next day :-)

Thank you, Bori. We wish you a pleasant flight!

frameworks

How do you start a class? First of all, you introduce yourself and encourage the group members to introduce themselves too. Since this is necessary but often quite awkward, exactly because it is perceived as a must, it is best to put it in some unusual frame so you make them relax and forget about their uneasiness. 

Then, if it's not a formal (academic) class, which was announced and put together months before, the specific goals and the specific needs of the specific group members are fuzzy. Of course, they hired you to develop their language use or presentation skills or prepare them for a job or a trip, and so on, and you may even know an approximate level (say, A2 or B2 or C1, and so on). But before meeting the specific participants, you can only think in stereotypes and assumptions. What their strengths and weaknesses are, what they like and dislike, what experiences and frustrations they bring to class can largely influence how you need to plan the classes to be effective for them. And the earlier you get clear about these, the better you all will manage.

So, what I did with some of my business classes is that I made it clear on the first class that it is up to all of us how we organize the course. I shared the responsibility, thus trying to motivate them to take part in the class and in the learning process more actively (too often do I experience that learners like to consider themselves as customers and learning as a service, instead of realizing what it is: sweaty work).

After we discussed, based on the triggers in the presentation, what they wanted from the classes, and what rules we all keep, I filled the board with what we agreed on and sent them the outcome. Like a contract. "These are the frames we set together." Usually it is quite effective and can be the basis of mutual respect and trust.

the four seasons

My kid learner is always super enthusiastic about handicraft. If she can cut, glue, stick, or draw, that's heaven (for adults, it tends to be burning hell). The other day, however, I must admit I screwed up: I allowed her to draw her family as an appetizer to an exercise. Well, let's just say, we didn't see much of the main dish that day.

So, having learned from this, I have tried to design the tasks so they engage the kid's creativity but within boundaries, set by the given time frame. Last time, for example, we were covering the four seasons. I brought her a tree, which had parts of each season, and made it into a jigsaw puzzle. First, she needed to put them back together and write the names of the seasons to the appropriate quarter. Then, we went through the months, practicing the alphabet and spelling. Finally, she had to think of what she likes about each season,  scribble it on a post-it, and stick it onto the picture. 

 

By the end, we had a rather cute composition and we managed to produce it in one sitting. With children I find it emphatically important to have a proper ending (after the main dish, or even better, after the dessert), so they can digest it more easily.

scoop.it: a scoop of chocolate for me, please

To continue with online curation tools, let us now turn to Scoop.it! (www.scoop.it). Similar to Pinterest, Scoop.it! offers free registration. Once you added it to your browser, you can categorize, curate, and comment online materials, including text. Based on your key words of interest, it sends you a daily selection of various online content, scooped by others. 

I like Scoop.it! too, using it parallel to Pinterest. The tagging here is an advantage; though it doesn't always work as you would expect. Well, naming is quite subjective, isn't it?

Take a peek at my Visual Resumes folder. I just love visual resumes; they are imaginative, to-the-point, and convincing. Wouldn't it be useful for us, educators, to consider making a visual resume, instead of the boring CVs? Aren't we supposed to be creative? And so we are!

assumptions, handle with care!

It is too easy to fall victim to assumptions. And of course we do, because that is how our mind works. We categorize, we predict, we assume -- that is, we draw on previous experiences when trying to decode the signs of the present situation. Many times it works just fine. For example, if you expect to teach a class that is composed of older people, you will be most probably right about not beginning with a Lady Gaga song. Or, if you are preparing to teach presentation skills to young adults, it is not a long shot to assume they might be interested, in one way or another, in the late Apple CEO Steve Jobs's famous talk.

In other cases, however, you can be seriously misled. Take the following situation for example. I was contacted by a young adult who just passed an intermediate (B2) exam. She wanted to "just keep up" and practice communication. So, I'm preparing for the first class: interesting article from an online magazine, a funny talk from TED, and some discussion tasks. How unprepared I had been for what was to come! She froze after each of my questions (type, How are you? or What do you think about it?) and had to pause and stare at me for 5-6 seconds to start producing an answer. There's no problem with having to stop to think, but B2 in my experience was a good conversational level, so initially I was clueless why she was staring at me instead of answering the most obvious questions. You could think it was just the initial excitement blocking her. Well, the performance didn't improve much. After a while, though, I realized what lay beneath. Funnily, she was perfect at grammar, at least in theory, and it came to me that it was just the lack of exposure to the language that had prevented her from putting this all into practice and confident, real competence.

Of course it makes you wonder about the efficiency and trustworthiness of language exams.