Teaching in Bucharest, Romania

In this article from our occasional series Another Day in the Life… guest writer Michael Tate describes a day teaching in Romania, where he's been for the last three years.

I’ve always been an early bird and I’ve always appreciated free time in the mornings. I’ve never been one to fall out of bed ten minutes before a lesson, drag a comb through my hair, pull on last night’s t-shirt and stumble through the door toast in one hand, lesson plans in the other. I’ve known teachers like this and I’m not one of them. I’ve had students who’ve had teachers like this and I know the effect coffee breath and stale sweat have on your student attendance level. Being self-employed I like to be fresh, smart and well-presented. It’s true what they say – you are only as good as your last lesson. So, today, like every other day, I wake up naturally at about half six.

Kettle on, PC on, balcony door open and a little look outside. It’s a lovely June morning in Bucharest, the sky is blue and the air is yet to be overcome with the sounds of traffic, construction dust and car fumes. The kettle whistles and I pour a coffee and settle down to prepare my files for the day. I travel to my students’ offices so I rarely have time to come home during the day. It takes me about an hour today. I have almost a decade of exercises, lessons, reading comprehensions and handouts on the PC so mostly it’s a case of thinking, choosing and pressing ‘print’. The only lesson I have to prepare from scratch is for a complete beginner.

After finishing my lesson planning I make a decent breakfast (might not have time for lunch), a cup of tea and mail the day’s students to remind them they have a lesson and ask them to phone me if there’s a problem. Then I browse a few sites, read a paper online, and maybe catch the morning news on the box. Finally I head for the shower, shave, spruce myself up and put on my suit. As I visit people in their offices I find that a professional appearance makes a big difference. I try to portray myself as a ‘professional linguistic trainer’. It makes no difference. I do what we all do. It just sounds better and I can justify the higher fees!

I leave the house at about 9.15 and jump on the tram for the centre of town. I’m lucky today and I get a seat. There’s a bus that goes in that direction too but it’s always hot and crowded so I prefer to spend an extra ten minutes on the tram but have the luxury of a pew. I flip open my book and do my best to ignore the group of cretins behind me playing ‘manele’ (an abominable variety of music normally involving overweight short dark guys in shades singing songs like ‘I love my money’ and ‘Cash cash cash’ whilst surrounded by semi-naked 18-year old dancers) on their mobile phones.

I arrive at the office at 10 and start my first one-hour private. My student is an economist. She’s very dedicated, always does her homework, and almost never cancels a lesson and only then with good cause. If only they were all like her!

After her lesson I jump on the bus for two stations and arrive at another office. Two lessons here – the first a husband and wife team from IBM preparing for the FCE exam in June. Easy lesson and a little different to the normal slog through the grammar as it’s more skills-based. She has completed lots of exercises and prepared a list of questions, he has done nothing.

In the same location, after them, is a small group of three intermediate students. Absolutely lovely people and this time they have come laden with chocolates from their weekend trip to Barcelona. At the end of the lesson I get a call from the HR manager from the next client, a fashion company with whom I have 18 hours a week all contracted and paid for regardless of cancellations (excellent work if you can get it), to tell me that my student can’t attend. Fair enough as she had a baby only three weeks previously and despite this still makes at least half of her lessons!. That’s determination for you. Another accountant. I decide that I want more female accountants as students.

Now I have a minor problem. The time is two o’clock and the next lesson is at five in the north of the city. I could go home and potter about for an hour and then leave again but it’s hardly worth it. Luckily the group I’ve just finished with overhear my phone conversation and ask me if my next class is cancelled, and upon finding out it is they invite me to lunch. We all head out to a lovely local restaurant with a beautifully planted-up garden. I have a bowl of soup followed by a spicy grilled chicken. They have soup and pizza. They are very pleased to have the opportunity to spend another two hours practicing their English and I’m very pleased for the relaxing and free lunch. Everyone’s a winner!

After lunch I jump on the metro and arrive at my last student’s house. She’s a lawyer, married to the MD of one of my other clients (all my students have come through recommendations so in some obscure way I can connect any student to any other student). She’s the complete beginner. She’s making good progress after only a few months. She knows a lot of the theory now and is very clever and works hard on the exercises. The problem is that we knew each other before she became a student and so she knows that my Romanian is pretty good. I have to frequently turn stupid in the lessons to force her to try things out in English. She’s very smart…but needs a lot more confidence. Another reliable student though.

The lesson lasts an hour and a half and I get home about eight. It’s been a long day but I feel satisfied and nicely worn out. After the big and unexpected lunch I just make myself a salad (need to lose weight anyway), pour myself a cold beer (yes, ok, don’t say it!) and put my feet up for a while.

Today was a good day – busy and with the good students. Not all days are like this. Other days I get lazy reluctant students who rarely do any work and have be forced to attend by their superiors, I get bundled around on the buses and trams, sweating like a pig in my suit because the locals are afraid to open the windows because they believe draughts kills, even though it’s 40 degrees inside the tram. I get all the rude cashiers in the shops and I come home hating my job, the city, the transport and the weather!

At least every day is different. Monotony would kill me.

The Teaching Knowledge Test

Want to improve your knowledge of teaching but don’t have the time or the money to take the CELTA? Consider the Teaching Knowledge Test!


Introduced by Cambridge ESOL (the CELTA people) in 2005, the Teaching Knowledge Test (1) was a response to requests by governments around the world (2) for an easily accessible way of training and certifying English Language teachers, including those who have previously taught other subjects and need to requalify. It is now offered by centres in 21 countries around the world.

A test of knowledge rather than competence (there is no teaching practice component), the test is divided into three modules :

Module 1 - Language and background to language learning and teaching

• Describing language and language skills.
• Background to language learning.
• Background to language teaching.

Module 2 - Planning lessons and use of resources for language teaching

• Planning and preparing a lesson or sequence of lessons.
• Selection and use of resources and materials.

Module 3 - Managing the teaching and learning process

• Teachers' and learners' language in the classroom.
• Classroom management

Each module involves an 80 minute test consisting of 80 objective questions. The modules can be taken together in one exam session or separately, over three exam sessions, so that you can prepare yourself as intensively or non-intensively as you wish. You can’t fail the test – it’s graded from Band 1 (lowest) to Band 4 (highest) to show the level of your knowledge in each area. The sort of questions you’ll be answering are:

Module 1

Scanning is :
a. reading a text quickly to get general information.
b. reading a text quickly to find specific information.
c. reading a text quickly to discover the writer’s attitude.

Module 2

Which of the following is a lesson aim :
a. students will complete a role play.
b. reduce teacher talking time.
c. give students practise in listening for gist.

Module 3

What type of mistake is involved in the following sentence : I live here since 1999.
a. wrong preposition
b. wrong tense
c. missing article

Not all the questions are multiple choice – others include matching, sequencing and odd-one-out. Multiple choice are simply the easiest to demonstrate here. (3)

There are no formal entrance requirements for the test, although candidates are advised to have a language proficiency of at least B1 on the Council of Europe scale (pre-intermediate). Similarly, it is not necessary to follow a course before taking the exam (4), though many preparatory courses are available worldwide, often as short as 20 hours per module or less.


Notes

1. The Cambridge ESOL website gives full details of the test, lists centres where it can be taken and answers some FAQs.

2. For information on which governments have adopted the test see here.

3. You can see the full range of question types in the sample papers for each of the three modules.

4. If you're interested in preparing yourself for the test, try The TKT Course by Mary Spratt, Alan Pulverness and Melanie Williams. Suitable for self-access study, it provides approximately 60-90 hours preparation, including practice tasks and tests.

Teaching Individual Sounds : Part Two

In the final part of this article, I shall be talking about activities which you can use to help students pronounce individual sounds which are a problem for them. However, all the practice activities in the world will be useless if the students don’t understand how to produce the sound in the first place. It’s therefore essential that the teacher knows and can explain this.

A list of the phonemes of English was given at the beginning of the first part of the article. They divide into consonants and vowels. What’s the difference?

A consonant sound is produced by blocking or obstructing the path of the air in some way as it passes out from the lungs. Try any of the consonant sounds – for example /p/ /f/ /t/ /g/ - and you’ll feel that in each case two parts of the mouth are brought close together to prevent air passing straight out. Now try any of the vowel sounds and you’ll see that this doesn’t happen – the air flows straight through, unobstructed.

Vowel Sounds

Which vowel sound is produced depends on the exact size and shape of the mouth when it’s produced. The mouth acts as a resonance chamber. To understand this imagine having several different shaped glasses partially filled with different amounts of water. If you tapped them with a spoon or rubbed your finger around the rim, as in the photo, you’d get a range of different sounds. In each case the sound produced is dependent on the size and shape of the cavity within the glass. With vowels the size and shape of the cavity is formed by the position of the mouth organs.

There may be several variables involved in vowel production, but the most important are :

• Is the jaw open or closed – or somewhere in between? This is sometimes described in terms of tongue height : is the tongue high in the mouth, close to the roof of the mouth or low - or somewhere in between?
• Is the tongue positioned in the front or back of the mouth - or somewhere in between?
• Are the lips spread or rounded – or somewhere in between?

Using these categories we can describe /i:/ as in meet as a close front spread vowel, while /u/ as in boot is close, back, rounded.

Consonant Sounds

Consonant sounds are also described using three variables – a) the use (or not) of voicing, b) the place of articulation, and c) the manner of articulation. What do these terms mean? In this article we’ll give a brief definition, and in the next a more detailed account.

• Voicing
  
  Half way down your larynx, behind your Adam’s apple, are the vocal cords – two bands of elastic muscle tissue which can vibrate as air from the lungs passes through them. Some sounds, known as voiced sounds involve vocal cord vibration whilst others, known as unvoiced sounds don’t. For example, place your fingers over your Adam’s apple and make a buzzing sound /zzzzzzzz/. You should feel the vocal cords vibrating. Now do the same with a hissing sound /sssssssss/ - the voicing disappears.
  
  All vowels are voiced, and over half the consonants. Try for yourself with some of the other sounds from the chart. Be careful though. If you add a vowel sound to an unvoiced consonant – for example if you say something like “ker” rather than just /k/, you’ll feel the voicing from the vowel.
  
  
• Place of Articulation
  
  The shape of the mouth, and the position of its different parts (mainly the tongue and lips) are also crucial to pronouncing the sound, and the second way of describing sounds reflects this. If you say the sounds /p/ and /b/ for example, you can easily feel that they are made using both lips. They are therefore called bilabial sounds. Or what about /f/ and /v/ ? They involve the use of one lip (the lower lip) and the teeth. They are therefore known as labio-dental sounds.
  
  Add to this what we’ve already said about voicing, and we can distinguish between the sounds in each pair : /p/ is an unvoiced bilabial, /b/ a voiced bilabial; /f/ is an unvoiced labio-dental and /v/ a voiced labio-dental.
  
  
• Manner of Articulation
  
  We’ve seen that /b/ is a voiced bilabial. Based on what we’ve seen so far, how would you classify /m/ ? try saying it in an extended form /mmmmm/.
  
  /m/ is also a voiced bilabial – it’s made by vibrating the vocal cords and with both lips. To distinguish it from /b/ we therefore need a third category – a description of what happens to the air as it passes out from the lungs.
  
  Try /b/ again. You should feel that the air is “stopped” – it builds up behind the closed lips for a moment, and then explodes out on release. Place your fingers in front of your mouth as you say it and you’ll feel it. The sound occurs on the moment of release. Because of this, /b/ is described as a plosive sound.
  
  /m/, on the other hand, doesn’t release the air through the mouth at all, but through the nose. Say /mmmmmm/ again and put your fingers under your nostrils. Again, you’ll feel the air passing out. /m/ is therefore known as a nasal sound.
  
  The three categories now allow us to distinguish between the two sounds : /b/ is a voiced bilabial plosive while /m/ is a voiced bilabial nasal.
  

In the next part of the article we’ll look again at the final two categories – place and manner of articulation – to see how the other consonants of English are formed.

Acknowledgement

Photo provided under Creative Commons Licence by Stareja via flickr

The Final Five Minutes

How do you close your lessons? In this article guest writer Chris Cotter suggests some useful activities for the last five minutes of any class.

A lot of experts have written about structuring a lesson, from the initial warm-up stage, through drills and practice, and on to an end activity that allows students to use the target language naturally. There's pace to consider, the type of drills to best make the language automatic, and how an early activity will tie into later portions of the lesson. But not enough attention has been given to ending a class effectively.

Many teachers simply ask: "Does anyone have any questions?" Even more teachers use the time to assign homework, collect assignments, and chat with students while everyone cleans up. But correction, review, and feedback offer a better use of the final five minutes.

• Correction: In the perfect class, students don't make any mistakes after applying the language. But, of course, a perfect lesson simply doesn't exist. Correction offers a practical way to remind the class as a whole of the language. This is in preference to interrupting a group's flow in a role play, interview, or presentation with on-the-spot correction, which then won't even benefit other groups.
  
  For example, one of my recent classes covered "going to" to talk about planned events. The end activity consisted of classmates interviewing as many people as possible about their real plans for the weekend. I observed, took notes, and wrote some mistakes on the board during the activity. Here was one that recurred several times: "I'm going to go to shopping." I wrapped up the activity with about five minutes of class time remaining, and asked the class to correct the sentence. I then drilled a few, similar examples orally, as in:
  
  Me: "I bowl."
  Class: "I'm going to go bowling."
  Me: "He skis."
  Class: "He's going to go skiing."
  Me: "She drinks."
  Class: "She is going to go drinking."
  
  But correction isn't merely limited to today's target language. I can cover any previously studied words or grammar points, for example. I can also draw the class's attention to words which they know, but perhaps used or pronounced incorrectly. I can even teach a more natural phrase or expression than one which popped up in the final activity.


• Review: Review focuses specifically on the material studied that day. I may reuse flashcards to choral drill vocabulary, particularly words that were troublesome for students early on. I may reread some questions from an earlier worksheet, in order to call for answers. I may reread answers from a worksheet, and call for appropriate questions. I may even ask for a response from part of the dialogue we studied. In other words, I can go pretty much anywhere as long as it reviews today's material. Whereas correction focuses on mistakes both with the target language and other points, review lets everyone take a final look at today's material. From a teacher's point of view, it's my final chance to make sure as many students as possible leave the class able to understand if not use the language correctly.
  
  Equally important, though, review serves to boost confidence. If students entered my class completely unable to use the new structure, the review session demonstrates that they have studied, learned, and can now apply it. Because there's usually only one correct response, it's oftentimes easier for students to measure learning via review, than it is through an open-ended speaking activity.


• Feedback: Whereas correction and review have a place in any lesson, feedback is a little more particular. Class size must be considered, because a group of twelve or more students makes individual feedback impossible. We must also think about how students will handle advice in front of their peers.
  
  In large classes, a general comment on performance can effectively close the lesson. For example, from my "going to" lesson: "Everyone used today's grammar and vocabulary well--we can use 'going to' for any planned event. Remember to ask follow-up questions, because this makes conversation more interesting! Kenji said, 'I'm going to visit some friends in Kyoto.' Can you think of a good follow-up question?" I only commented on today's lesson, but I could just as easily have added: "Don't forget our long term goal. We want to have a conversation with a partner for five minutes without stopping."
  
  I make the same general comments in small classes, too. However, I also add a very brief comment for each individual student. During the final activity, in addition to noting mistakes, I write down the strengths and weaknesses of each student. I only focus on one skill (e.g., fluency, grammar, listening, pronunciation, or vocabulary) to offer a positive statement, and one skill to offer a "needs work on" statement. My notes may look something like this: "V+ P- (th-sound)," which translates as good use of vocabulary, but poor pronunciation, especially with "th-." I can then spend fifteen or twenty seconds on each student, offering some personal attention to help them with their studies.
  

By closing a lesson with correction, review, and feedback, I'm giving the students a means to measure their progress. They measure today's learning with a quick review of the key lesson points. They also gauge their retention with previously studied material when we go over correction. Lastly, in order to fine tune individual needs, feedback allows the teacher to give some positive and negative comments, as well as tips or remedies for each student.

If you’re looking for lesson plans and materials to use with your upper-intermediate and advanced students, don’t miss Chris’ website Heads Up English!

Acknowledgement

Photo provided under Creative Commons licence by tata_aka_T via flickr