Shakespeare in a nutshell

Using videos to teach vocabulary and more…

It couldn’t be easier to get video into the classroom these days, so why not take advantage of the wide variety of interesting contexts and easily-available authentic language?

An example of this is to use Shakespeare Speaks BBC video  series about the life, times and language of William Shakespeare. It is available as an animated  series and it has a supporting interactive website, downloadble materials, podcasts and a rich social media experience. Find more at Shakesperare Speaks at BBC Learning

Watch videos at

• As dead as a doornail
• I’ll send him packing
• All that glisters is not gold
• Strange bedfellows
• Though this be madness, yet there’s method in’t
• Wild-goose chase
• What’s done is done
• The world’s mine oyster
• A tower of strength
• Spotless reputation
• The green eyed monster
• In a pickle
• Forever and a day
• Give no words but mum
• Pound of flesh
• A fool’s paradiset 
• I must be cruel, only to be kind
• Wear my heart upon my sleeve
• Greek to me

EFL Teachers as Intercultural Mediators in the 21st Classroom

Culture has become an increasingly important component of English language teaching in the last three decades and has also been acknowledged as a key element in education. Language itself is defined by  culture. We cannot be competent in the language if we do not also understand the culture that has shaped and informed it. We cannot learn a second or foreign language if we do not have an awareness of that culture, and how that culture relates to our own first language/first culture. It is not only therefore essential to have cultural awareness, but also intercultural awareness.

Language teachers are key figures in preparing students for participation in an increasingly multilingual and culturally diverse world, and their practices in the EFL classrooms help to  mediate language and culture learning from an intercultural perspective; and also in terms of attitudes and intercultural awareness skills for intercultural language teaching and learning. So what are these attitudes and skills that make up intercultural competence? Among them are:

• observing, identifying and recognising
• comparing and contrasting
• negotiating meaning
• dealing with or tolerating ambiguity
• effectively interpreting messages
• limiting the possibility of misinterpretation
• defending one’s own point of view while acknowledging the legitimacy of others
  accepting difference.

There are many approaches to intercultural competence and many opinions on what it is, since it is difficult to recognize the extent to which it is possible to distinguish intercultural competence from intercultural communicative competence. Basically, intercultural competence can be summarized as the ability to interact successfully across cultures, where ‘successfully’ refers to social effectiveness (the ability to achieve social goals) and appropriateness (acceptable communication in a context). Intercultural competence involves achange of perspective on self and other, and entails affective and cognitive changes.There are different theories on what intercultural competence consists of.

These theories change depending on the context or one’s point of view. According to the Common Council of Europe (Council of Europe, European Language Portfolio,104:105), “intercultural skills and knowledge include the ability to bring the culture of origin and the foreign culture in relation with each other; cultural sensitivity and the ability to identify and use a variety of strategies for contact with those from other cultures; the capacity to fulfill the role of cultural intermediary between one’s own culture and the foreign culture and to deal effectively with intercultural misunderstanding and conflict situations; the ability to overcome stereotyped relationships.” Following Byram  (2001), the components of intercultural competence are knowledge, skills, and attitudes, supplemented by values that are part of one’s multiple social identities. This model of intercultural competence consists of:

1. Attitudes and values (savoir être), which form the foundation of intercultural competence. They represent an affective capacity to suspend ethnocentric attitudes towards and perceptions of others and their cultures, and a cognitive ability to decenter, develop and maintain intercultural relations. This component represents the ability to relativize one’s own values, beliefs, and behaviors, recognition of cultural differences, their acceptance as possible and correct, and the maintenance of a positive attitude towards them.
2. Knowledge (savoirs), not primarily the knowledge of a particularo bjective culture, but rather subjective culture, which gives the direct insight into the worldview, functioning, processes, and practices of different cultural groups in intercultural interaction.
3. Skills: a) skills of interpreting and relating (savoir comprendre), or the ability to interpret events from another culture, to explain and relate them to events from one’s own culture; b) skills of discovery and interaction (savoir apprendre/faire), or the ability to gain new knowledge of a culture and cultural practices, to combine and use knowledge, attitudes, and skills in communication and interaction;c) critical cultural awareness (savoir s’engager), which deals with the awareness of one’s own and other’s values and their mutual influence as well as the ability to evaluate critically practices and products in one’s own and other’s culture.

Therefore, an inter-culturally competent communicator possesses the knowledge, motivation, and skills to interact effectively and appropriately in diverse cultural contexts. Consequently, foreign language teachers’ role as mediators of language and culture in foreign language education would definitely be defined by the concept that culture and language are an integral part of the language acquisition process. Students cannot learn a language without learning its culture. But at the same time, cultural learning would only be truly meaningful if it is comparative and contrastive. Cross-cultural comparison would expose learners to a new set of values, meanings and symbols that can be understood in the light of their own cultural experience. When learning a foreign language, not only are students gaining access to a different way of viewing and understanding the world, but also of reconsidering their own world-view. When carried out in this way, cultural learning can be said to be intercultural.

References:

• Byram,M. (2001) Teaching and Assessing Intercultural Communicative Competence.Multilingual Matters.
• Council of Europe.  European Language Portofolio available at https://www.coe.int/en/web/portfolio

THE ROLE OF EDUCATION FOR THE 21st CENTURY

Our world is changing, and in order to prepare our children for this new world we need to change the way we educate them. In the 21st century educators must create a curriculum that will help students connect with the world and understand the issues that our world faces.

Schools in the 21st century should become core centers, a place for teachers and students to connect with those around them and their community. Teachers in this new environment would become less instructors and more orchestrators of information, giving children the ability to turn knowledge into wisdom.

In order to educate in the 21st century, teachers and administrators need to cultivate and maintain the student’s interest in the material by showing how this knowledge applies in the real world. They must also try to increase their student’s curiosity, which will help them become lifelong learners. Next they should be flexible with how they teach and give learners the resources to continue learning outside of school.

There are many skills that children will need in order to be successful in the 21st century. Here are a few of the most important 21st century skills:

• Ability to collaborate, work in teams
• Critical thinking skills
• Oral presentation skills
• Written communication skills
• Ability to use technology
• Willingness to examine civic and global issues
• Ability to conduct research to learn about issues and concepts
• Chance to learn about new career opportunities
• Inter and Intra personal skills

In the ideal 21st century classroom, students are actually excited about going to school, and there are little or no discipline problems because everyone is eager to learn. In this type of classroom activities and lessons are related to the community, whether local or global. Students collaborate with people from different schools and different countries to learn about issues that affect us all, as well as how we can solve them today and in the future.

The curriculum in the classroom is designed to incorporate many skills and  multiple intelligence levels, and makes use of technology and multimedia. The lessons are not based only on textbooks, instead they are project based. Skills and content are learned through their research and projects, and textbooks are provided as one of many possible resources.

A new addition to 21st century curriculum is the study of green education and environmental issues. Students are taught awareness of their world and real experts such as scientist and politicians are brought in to answer student’s questions.

New schools in the 21st century would be bright and spacious, and  children would have room for group projects and individual assignments. Walls would be hung with student work, and there would be places for students to put on performances for their parents and members of the community. Students have full access to technology and, if possible, every student will have a laptop.

Within the 21st school there would be labs and learning centers, as well as studios for art, music, theatre, and so on. Each classroom would be equipped with the ICT devices so that all students can share school productions and other school presentations.

Rethinking schools and teachers´s role properly to foster an integrated approach to learning and educate with creativity in the new century is an ongoing duty for all as global citizens and a human right for the generations to come.

"By 2030, ensure that all learners acquire knowledge and skills
needed to promote sustainable development, including,
among others, through education for sustainable
development and sustainable lifestyles, human rights,
gender equality, promotion of a culture of peace and nonviolence, global citizenship and appreciation of cultural
diversity and of culture’s contribution to sustainable
development“.(UNESCO)

Motivation in the Classroom

TEN TOP TIPS 

1. Praise Students in Ways Big and Small

Recognize work in class, display good work in the classroom, organize academic pep rallies to honor the honor roll, and even sponsor a Teacher Shoutout section in the student newspaper to acknowledge student’s hard work.

2. Expect Excellence

Set high, yet realistic expectations. Make sure to voice those expectations. Set short terms goals and celebrate when they are achieved.

3. Spread Excitement

Show your enthusiasm in the subject and use appropriate, concrete and understandable examples to help students grasp it. For example, I love alliteration. Before I explain the concept to students, we “improv” subjects they’re interested in. After learning about alliteration, they brainstorm alliterative titles for their chosen subjects.

4. How to Motivate Students: Mix It Up

It’s a classic concept and the basis for differentiated instruction, but it needs to be said: using a variety of teaching methods caters to all types of learners. By doing this in an orderly way, you can also maintain order in your classroom. In a generic example for daily instruction, journal for 10 minutes to open class; introduce the concept for 15 minutes; discuss/group work for 15 minutes; Q&A or guided work time to finish the class. This way, students know what to expect everyday and have less opportunity to act up.

5. Assign Classroom Jobs

With students, create a list of jobs for the week. Using the criteria of your choosing, let students earn the opportunity to pick their classroom jobs for the next week. These jobs can cater to their interests and skills.

Classroom Job Examples

• Post to the Class blog
• Update Calendar
• Moderate review games
• Pick start of class music
• Watch class pet
• Public relations officer (address people who visit class)
• Standard class jobs like Attendance, Cleaning the boards, putting up chairs, etc.

6. Hand Over Some Control

If students take ownership of what you do in class, then they have less room to complain (though we all know, it’ll never stop completely). Take an audit of your class, asking what they enjoy doing, what helps them learn, what they’re excited about after class. Multiple choice might be the best way to start if you predict a lot of “nothing” or “watch movies” answers.

After reviewing the answers, integrate their ideas into your lessons or guide a brainstorm session on how these ideas could translate into class.

On a systematic level, let students choose from elective classes in a collegiate format. Again, they can tap into their passion and relate to their subject matter if they have a choice.

7. Open-format Fridays

You can also translate this student empowerment into an incentive program. Students who attended class all week, completed all assignments and obeyed all classroom rules can vote on Friday’s activities (lecture, discussion, watching a video, class jeopardy, acting out a scene from a play or history).

8. Relating Lessons to Students’ Lives

Whether it is budgeting for family Christmas gifts, choosing short stories about your town, tying in the war of 1812 with Iraq, rapping about ions, or using Pop Culture printables, students will care more if they identify themselves or their everyday lives in what they’re learning.

9. Track Improvement

In those difficult classes, it can feel like a never-ending uphill battle, so try to remind students that they’ve come a long way Set achievable short-term goals , keep self-evaluation forms to fill out and compare throughout the year, or revisit mastered concepts that they once struggled with to refresh their confidence.

10. Reward Positive Behavior Outside the Classroom

Tie service opportunities, cultural experiences, extracurricular activities into the curriculum for extra credit or as alternative options on assignments. Have students doing Habitat for Humanity calculate the angle of the freshly cut board, count the nails in each stair and multiply the number of stairs to find the total number of nails; write an essay about their experience volunteering or their how they felt during basketball tryouts; or any other creative option they can come up with.

Motivate students beyond the classroom!!

Task based approach

In recent years a debate has developed over which approaches to structuring and planning and implementing lessons are more effective Task based learning offers an alternative for language teachers. In a task-based lesson the teacher doesn’t pre-determine what language will be studied, the lesson is based around the completion of a central task and the language studied is determined by what happens as the students complete it. See more about at the following links:

Example 1 Task based speaking 

Example 2 Task based approach

Useful tips about Flipped Learning Classrooms

 Flipped Learning is defined as a pedagogical approach in which direct instruction moves from the group learning space to the individual learning space, and the resulting group space is transformed into a dynamic, interactive learning environment where the educator guides students as they apply concepts and engage creatively in the subject matter.

HOW TO TEACH AND USE FLIPped LEARNING CLASSROOMS?.

Here are some tips and useful links:

1. Flexible Environment
   Educators create flexible spaces where students choose when and where they learn. Additionally, educators who flip their classes are flexible in their expectations of student timelines for learning and in their assessments of student learning.
2. Learning Culture
   In a Flipped Learning model, in-class time is dedicated to exploring topics in greater depth and creating rich learning opportunities. As a result, students are actively involved in knowledge construction as they participate in and evaluate their learning in a manner that is personally meaningful.
3. Intentional Content
   Flipped Learning Educators determine what they need to teach and what materials students should handle on their own. Educators use Intentional Content to maximize classroom time in order to adopt methods of student-centered, active learning strategies, depending on grade level and subject matter.
4. Professional Educator
   The role of a Professional Educator is even more important, and often more demanding, in a Flipped Classroom than in a traditional one. During class time, they need to observe students, providing them with instant feedback and an assessment their work. While Professional Educators take on less visibly prominent roles in a flipped classroom, they remain the essential part that enables Flipped Learning to occur successfully.

While the Flipped Learning model may not work for every class, the model represents an innovative approach to teaching with the potential to create active, engaged and learning-centered classrooms. FLN’s four suggested pillars serve as ways to help educators successfully implement a Flipped Learning model. 

USEFUL LINKS

Flipped learning

Edmodo

EduTECH

Giving Feedback in ELT

The term feedback can apply to a number of classroom situations and procedures, but here it refers to a range of techniques employed by the teacher to facilitate responses from the students to an exercise or task. Click on here to find out more...