CELTAchat: May 2019

A Summary of #CELTAchat May 2019 By Adi Rajan

Many thanks to @bellinguist @fionaljp @adi_rajan@Cathyofnusleand @angelos_bollas for their contributions to May 2019 #CELTAchat
We discussed ‘meaningful local adaptations: what and how’?

Adaptations for future work contexts

·      @bellinguist included 3 hours of lessons to ESOL students along with 3 hours of lessons to ELT students in a 10-week part-time course to prepare trainees to become ESOL teachers in further education, addressing a need at the time in the UK.
·      @Cathyofnusle suggested including TP teaching materials that would be used wherever the candidates are likely to teach if this could be determined. @adi_rajan raised the issue of poor-quality teaching materials in the formal education sector and a lack of materials in the informal one in his South Asian context, posing problems with adapting TP teaching materials in this way.
·      @angelos_bollas said his courses in Athens had very diverse trainees but certain input sessions such as professional development, teaching YLs/teens were tailored to the demands of the local market.

Adaptions for local linguistic needs

·      @fionaljp, @bellinguist and @angelos_bollas shared examples of having made changes in the way they taught the phonemic chart/pronunciation to Irish trainees to accommodate Irish speakers. @fionaljp adapted RP collaboratively with her trainees.
·      @angelos_bollas also changed phonology sessions to include “transcriptions that best illustrated Irish pronunciation and the importance of developing learners’ receptive pronunciation skills”.
·      @cathyofnusle said her trainees tend to have a mix of different accents including North American English and she covers variations in pronunciation.
·      @fionaljp shared a pronunciation site with resources on different types of English accents: The Voice Cafe.
·      @adi_rajan referred to an Indian academic (who did the CELTA recently) who gave feedback on the centre’s use of British English pronunciation models instead of General English ones. @adi_rajan highlighted the challenges of making adaptations here when Indian English pronunciation hasn’t been standardized and the fact that it might exclude non-Indian trainees and have an impact on the external assessment.

Adaptations to take into account varying levels of teaching experience

· @fionaljp minimised language analysis and increased planning and teaching techniques on a course for experienced teachers. @bellinguist has observed a similar trend in courses, suggesting that it would be better to focus on language needed in the lessons trainees were going to teach. @adi_rajan felt that experienced teachers in his context needed just as much language analysis as everyone else.
· On the other hand, @angelos_bollas includes more language analysis sessions in English-speaking countries or on courses with many native speakers who haven’t had much explicit grammar instruction at school.

Adaptations to texts

· @fionaljp has adapted authentic texts used for reading input sessions by making them relevant to the location of the course. She highlighted this as a way of setting an example for the skills assignment. However, @cathyofnusle felt this could be counter-productive and cited an instance of trainees selecting a text about Prague which was interesting to them as visitors but had nothing new to offer to students.
· @adi_rajan and @fionaljp recommended including more authentic, local voices in listening texts by way of L2 speakers.

· @adi_rajan shared an example of a British tutor using texts with references to current events in the UK such as Brexit which Indian trainees weren’t familiar with. This could be both an argument for making texts contextual to trainees as well as finding opportunities to develop trainees’ awareness of the wider world.

Challenges with adaptations

· @Cathyofnusle and @angelos_bollas have worked with very diverse candidates and this raises the question of who to adapt for and how best to adapt in these situations.

Thank you to Darren Bell @bellinguist for volunteering to write this month's summary.

I am happy to write the summary for this month's #CELTAchat
— Darren Bell (@bellinguist) April 8, 2019

#CELTAchat summary 8 April 2019

Many thanks to @bellinguist @fionaljp @GioLic1976 @adi_rajan @Cathyofnusle @sandymillin @jonjoTESOL @anniethomson78 @admiralwamy @teflerinha for their contributions to April’s #CELTAchat

We discussed two of the sessions at IATEFL 2019 related to teacher training:

Alistair Douglas talk

Title: Here we go again: time to update your CELTA course?

This talk presented research findings and suggestions of how we might incorporate more current ideas into initial teacher training courses.

Reactions/thoughts:@GioLic1976 summarised the purpose of Alistair’s talk, i.e. asking us to reflect on how much what we teach on CELTA reflects our teaching practices. He agreed with the point made in the talk about updating CELTA inputs @fionaljp believes that input sessions should be updated but in terms of teaching practices we need to consider the gap in experience between the tutor and the trainee @GioLic1976 thinks that, essentially, trainees are novice teachers and wouldn’t expect them to be able to do what a highly experienced teacher can do @Cathyofnusle referred to Picasso – the fact that you could see in his early work he had good techniques. He had nailed down the basic skills and then went on to play with them. That’s what new teachers need to do @jonjoTESOL thinks failure is part of teaching and teachers and students need to learn how to fail “correctly” with reflection and action. CELTA really is just planting seeds @sandymillin said the point Alistair seemed to be making in his talk was that a lot of the same things seem to show up in trainer speech, like ICQs, pre-teaching vocab etc but aren’t reflected in their teaching, and vice versa

asking ICQs:@GioLic1976 Alistair pointed out that there was nothing in the course syllabus that says trainees have to ask ICQs, and yet this seems to be a common expectation.

@Cathyofnusle prefers trainees to give examples or demonstrate tasks rather than use ICQs

@bellinguist asked whether there was a specific criterion for checking understanding of instructions in the syllabus @GioLic1976 said that there was but it did not say ICQs needed to be asked

pre-teaching vocabulary: @bellinguist is currently teaching on a CELTA course and his co-tutor felt this was an essential part of receptive skills procedure but believes the problem with it is that trainees often focus on words out of the context of the text @Cathyofnusle tends to be minimalist about it and suggests trainees are ready to clarify if asked @sandymillin believes pre-teaching vocab is really only necessary for one or two items that are really blocking

focusing on spoken output:@GioLic1976 asked if we as tutors encourage trainees to do this as much as we should? @Cathyofnusle said that’s what TP feedback is all about, i.e. where we respond to trainees’ ouput. Whether we encourage them enough to respond to student output depends on their ability. @fionaljp thinks focusing on student output comes with experience – on short initial training courses we just need to show them the way for future practice @bellinguist thinks if we changed the approach it might be achieved, i.e. focusing on true task based learning but admitted it might be too ambitious for an initial teacher training course @sandymillin is still working on this in her own practice. She believes stronger trainees can manage it but others can’t even get past activity set-up until very late in the course @anniethomson78 thinks beyond straightforward correction, this is something that comes much later on when they have clocked more hours in the classroom but perhaps it could be focused on more

shared beliefs on teaching practices: @bellinguist usually talks with his co-tutor about how trainees do feedback, i.e. avoiding 100% plenary feedback and when to correct errors @GioLic1976’s favourite hobby horse is smooth transitioning to keep the pace and the students’ interest

Melissa Lamb talk

Title: What if we took away input?

This talk examined the role of input and presented an alternative way of structuring a teacher training course to maximise skills development.

Here is a link to a blog post summarising Melissa’s talk by Barefoot TEFL Teacher IATEFL 2019 Day 3 - Review

@sandymillin summarised the purpose of Melissa’s talk, i.e. flipping a teacher training course like CELTA so input was at home, guided by trainers and at school there was more guided planning and lots of rehearsal. IH London gave the tutors 40 hours to produce the input

Reactions/thoughts: @GioLic1976 thinks this is a great idea provided you have the budget and the time to produce the content @bellinguist asked what kind of feedback there had been from the trainees @Cathyofnusle is not sure she could trust trainees to spend time at home reading the input during the course @fionaljp and @anniethomson76 love the idea @sandymillin suggests the content could be pooled together in some way but it would require co-ordination @admiralwamy thinks this approach “fixes” one of the major problems of full time CELTA: often the input sessions come at the wrong time for trainees. However, there may be a problem: it depends massively on the trainees working well together. If they don’t the workshops won’t work. Group bonding is vital @adi_rajan says that he learnt a great deal from the input on his pre service training course because it focused on the how rather than the what and thinks trainees in his context would feel a bit cheated with the flipped approach @teflerinha thinks loop input is very helpful but it can be overdone and thinks it should be used judiciously. Some things work better as flipped learning than others, e.g. concept checking

Feedback/impact on trainee performance: @sandymillin says rehearsal in particular improved their confidence. The trainees still felt stressed but both the assessor and the trainers said it was a different quality of stress and nowhere near as high as on a standard course @admiralwamy believes there were seven Pass Bs and 3 Passes on the course

Melissa Lamb responded on Facebook to address the following points raised about her talk and very kindly agreed to let us include her comments in the summary: