EAP

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Using Google docs for pronunciation practice

 Hi everyone,
I am back. Kinda. I started writing this post but never managed to finish it. Today I did. So………….
Once again, good ideas shared in the staff room. This time the ideas had to do with pronunciation. The other day, Vicky was talking about pronunciation and Steve mentioned a few ideas on activities that would help our learners (99% Asian) improve their pronunciation. So, that’s what we are going to talk abouttoday. This post is probably going to be short and sweet.
Music Department

Sheffield University ( Department of Music)

Using Google Docs

Yeap. You read correctly. Why not use the microphone feature on Google dos to get your learners to become aware of any problems they have with pronunciation. How? Tell them to read a sentence in front of their pc and use the microphone feature. The feature will type what they are saying and if they are not saying something correctly, it will not show the word.
My Asian students had difficulty with the sounds (v) and (w), so I wrote words on the white board and told them to practice saying them and use the moicrophone feature. They did and my students told me that they realised that what they were saying was not recognised by the Google doc thingy, which made them want to practice more!
Do you use Google docs to teach/ practice pronunciation? What else do you use it for? Feel free to share your ideas in the comments section below. That’s all for now and don’t forget to connect with me somehow, somewhere.
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Speed Citations

The great thing about staff rooms is that they are excellent place to hear about a task and then use it in your class, so that’s what I am going to share with you today. A cool task on citations/ referencing.You can do this with your learners if you teach EAP or writing classes that require research and referencing. My colleague John, who works at the ELTC at Sheffield University, told me about this one, so shout out to him. I did change it a bit though.

Speed citations

I had already introduced citations and students were familiar with what they need to do when citing a source in their texts, but there was still a bit of uncertainty.  How does this task work? Students need to find the author and date of a publication as quickly as possible and write it down as they would do in in-text citations.

Procedure

  • Give your students one publication/source each. If you have 12 students, you need 12 sources. I used books, journal articles, and a newspaper (I told them that one of the sources could not be used in their academic writing projects and that’s why the newspaper was in it. My students are not journalists and the newspaper was the Metro paper which is a free paper).
  • Put students in a circle and tell them that they only need a piece of paper and a pen.
  • Each student has about 30 seconds to find the author and the date of the source and write it down as they would as part of their in-text citation.
  • After the 30 seconds, students give their source to the person next to them and move on to the next source. This is done clockwise.
  • At the end, give them a couple of minutes to check what they have written on their paper and make necessary corrections.
  • In order to check their answers, each student comes to the board and writes what they have written. One source per student.
Music Department

Sheffield University ( Department of Music)

My thoughts

Why is this a good task?
This was a follow up task, something like a revision which brought the element of ‘fun’ into my ‘dry’ academic writing classes. Students, especially Asian learners, struggle when it comes to identifying the difference between a first name and a family name. They also don’t know where to look for the date or which date they should put in their texts. Learners had a bit more fun cause this was like a game.
eecc3-delta2bbooks
So, there you have it folks. Speed citations. If you are looking for more fun ideas, you may want to have a look at the calling all EAP tutors post and specifically the comments section.
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Getting adult learners involved in peer- feedback for writing

So, today’s post is about using peer- feedback in the classroom. This post was originally written for the TESOL Greece Newsletter (issue 127) and since I will be doing peer feedback with my learners on Monday as part of my academic writing class, I thought it would be a  good idea to share that article here as well. So, let’s talk about peer feedback.

Feedback is a way for teachers to make suggestions on students’ written work and help their learners improve (Harmer, 2013). An alternative way to give feedback for writing is to get the students to peer-review and offer feedback. Peer-assessment does not replace traditional assessment but it does enhance the learning process (Topping 1998, cited in Peng).  But before moving on, what exactly is peer-assessment? It is:

an arrangement in which individuals consider the amount, level, value, worth, quality, or success of the products or outcomes of learning of peers of similar status.

                                          (Topping, 1998, cited in Peng 2010)

This feedback method works well with all learners, but especially adults. Therefore, getting learners to provide peer-feedback in an EAP, Business or any other type of English lesson aimed at adults is very beneficial. This article discusses why peer-feedback for writing can play an integral part in the everyday classroom routine and makes suggestions regarding different tasks a teacher ca use in class in order to encourage peer-feedback.

Why Peer-feedback?

There are many reasons why a teacher should encourage adult learners to give peer-feedback. Firstly, it promotes active learning as learners have to think about another student’s work. It helps build trust among students and is also a way to get students to co-operate and collaborate.

Why not peer-feedback?

It may affect the ‘balance’ between the teacher and the learner                                    (Gardner, 2000) as traditionally it is the teacher who provides the feedback and not the learner. The learners may not feel comfortable or may even feel unwilling to mark other students’ work. They might also be too generous and do ‘friendly marking’ which means that they are more interested in the fact that they are marking their friends’ work and not so much in the actual feedback.

While all these are quite ‘valid’ reasons why a teacher might avoid peer-feedback in the classroom, surely with lots of training, good monitoring on behalf of the teacher, and a constant reminder of why peer-feedback is necessary and how helpful it can be, both the learners and the teacher can benefit a lot from using the alternative feedback method.

Tasks that promote peer-feedback

There are lots of tasks that can be used in the language classroom in order to get the students to peer-assess. As the purpose of the article is to promote peer-feedback among adults, the activities chosen, are more appropriate for mature learners.

Using rubrics/checklists

When a teacher first introduces the idea of peer-feedback, it is essential that this is done in a more controlled manner. The teacher can make a checklist or provide rubrics according to which the student gives feedback to his/her classmate’s work. If the group is quite weak, instead of providing feedback on grammar, learners could be asked to check if their classmate has a thesis statement or if there is a main idea in each paragraph and so on. Another good idea is to get learners in groups of four and form a feedback reading circle where each student gets feedback from the three other members of the group.

Reformulation

Reformulation is when the student hands in a piece of writing and the teacher reformulates the original with a better version. Instead of the teacher providing a better version, it can be the learners who are providing the improved version of their classmate’s work.

To conclude….

Peer-feedback involves ‘’students in their own destiny’’ and encourages autonomy as well as motivates them even more (Brown 2004, cited in Peng 2010). It can be a very useful feedback method for every teacher as long as it is monitored and planned well. It will probably never replace teacher feedback but it is a method that can be used to get adult learners more involved in their work.

How often do you use peer feedback in your adult classes? Feel free to share your thoughts in the comments section below.

References

Gardner, D. (2000). ‘’Self–assessment for autonomous learners.’’ Links and letters: Hong Kong p.40-60.

Harmer, J. (2013). The Practice of English Language Teaching. China: Pearson.

Peng, J (2010). Selected Proceedings of the 2008 Second Language Research Forum, ed. Matthew T. Prior et al., 89-107. Somerville, MA: Cascadilla Proceedings Project.

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Calling all EAP techers

So, today I am feeling inspired cause well, I have been feeling a bit uninspired lately especially when it comes to EAP writing. So, today you, my readers/fellow teachers are going to share with me your top tips. How on earth do you make your academic writing classes interesting and fun when teaching in an EAP context and especially if it is an intense pre- sessional EAP class?cam building

My context: a group of post grad Asian students who are having sessions in order to be ready for their master’s degree in September. I have loads of academic ‘stuff’ to go through and not that much time. Sure I do my pair writing, my peer feedback, I try to integrate more skills and introduce a summary writing task based on a speaking task. I say a few jokes, I may even offer a chocolate or something for the best writing but that’s about it. I bore my students to death and I get bored myself ( there. I said it).

So, how do you do it? So, take off your fun EFL teacher hat and put on your EAP cap and tell me what you do. How do you make academic writing less boring? The comments section is all yours..

Thanks!!

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Drawings in the EAP classroom (my Iatefl presentation)

Hi everyone,

Today’s post is a video. It is my Iatefl (Birmingham) presentation.Un fortunately, I was unable to go to Iatefl, so I thought I’d make a voiceover video.  My talk is about using drawings when teaching academic writing.

Before watching please keep in mind:

  • My presentaion was part of the forum on academic writing and it needed to be 15 mnutes long.
  • My abstract stated that I was going to also talk a bit about presentations and how to use drawings there, but I decided to only briefly touch upon that as this forum was about academic writing.
  • Even if you do not teach academic writing, you can still use some of these drawings in your classroom.
  • I was nervous!

So, I hope enjoy the video and feel free to leave a question, comment in the comments section below.

Thanks for watching.

Joanna

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Iatefl here I come!

Hi everyone!

I just though I’d pop in and write a quick post about my Iatefl talk and maybe entice you to come by. So,

What’s my talk about?

The main focus is on academic writing, as my talk is part of the forum on academic writing (but my drawings can be adapted for any writing class).

I will talk about using drawings in the EAP classroom. In my classrooms both the teacher and the learner draw. There will be a bit of ‘research talk’ but most of the talk will be about practical  classroom stuff.

I will tell you why I draw and what I draw during my presessional EAP sessions.

I will ask you (yeap, you) to draw too.

When is my talk?

Thursday the 14th at 10:25  Session 2.1. Hall 10b

I hope I see you there or anywhere at the conference!! By the way, I will be blogging about Iatefl hopefully from Birmingahma as well, so stay tuned!!

8b9ae-10561814_10152679793187425_481449428002127213_n

Nope, this is not my presentation, just a random pic 🙂

 

 

Thanks for stopping by.

Joanna

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I love to hate formal observations

I mentioned in one of my previous posts that my next post was going to be about formal observations cause well, loads of people are talking about them, and I thought, I’d join in. Now, loads of time has gone by since I said that, and this post has been sitting in my drafts section for quite a while now, but now is the time. Let’s talk about observations and formal observations (observations that are assessed).

So here is what I think. Formal observations are necessary, but evil (tell us how you really feel Jo). Now, evil is used for dramatic purposes. Before I go all full on about what I dislike about formal observations, I will start off with what I like about observations in general. You learn. You get constructive feedback and you see your teaching through someone else’s eyes. If you are a stronger personality, you may even ask the person observing you to pay attention to one of your weaknesses and give you tips on how to deal with that weakness. They help you improve, think out of the box, and maybe even approach a lesson differently next time. Anyone can observe you. A new teacher can give you fresh ideas a more seasoned teacher may give you practical tips and vice versa.

BUT as I said earlier, formal observations are not my cup of tea. Why? Cause even if you are the best eva prepared and qualified teacher, there is someone who is there looking at you,assessing you,  and this is stressful.

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Assessment and formal observations

In cases where formal observations are part of a diploma/certificate, they become a ‘tool’ of assessment.Someone is  assessing you based on what? Criteria. Criteria set by whom? Do these criteria fit all teaching contexts, situations, learners and teachers?

So, my next question now is, if you have a 3-4 formal observation, will they really showcase how good or bad a teacher you are? And before you say… ”that’s not why formal observations take place Joanna”. I will ask you, “so why assess then?” That’s why, for me, the assessment part of formal observations shouldn’t exist. In my little brain, the sole purpose of an observation should be to help you find ways to become a better teacher. Does assessment take that away? Yes, when you are box ticking.

Now you may say, “Yes, but in order to get a certificate/diploma, we need to formally observe you and assess you.” Sure you do, but just cause I pass the assessment criteria, doesn’t mean I know how to teach. I could have read all the criteria and made a lesson that fits these crtieria, couldn’t I? Or I could be teaching this way to pass the criteria but in real life, I neva, eva teach like that.

And anyway, what is a perfect/ good lesson? Who defines good or bad? Finally, (this is just a question that will probably piss you off) but isn’t the person assessing you, assessing you the way s/he thinks the lesson should be because the criteria have become embedded in their brain?

So what do I suggest?

Of course I am in a position to make decisions, but in my perfect little pink world this would happen. Observations wouldn’t be assessed. Period.There would be no box ticking.

I would observe, but not assess.

I would ask the teacher being observed to tell me what they want me to focus on (some people to do that). I would then make suggestions. Not assess.

I would ask for lesson plans after the observation. I would give the teacher the time to sit down and write a lesson plan after the observed lesson. Don’t get me wrong, the teacher can make a little lesson plan prior to his/her lesson, but, I, the observer would get it after the lesson. Why? Cause for me, one of the hardest and most stressful part of a formal observation was sticking to my lp.

Final thoughts

I have had some very enlightening and helpful observations in my teaching career. I have gained a lot from them. How should teachers be assessed in order to get a diploma? I dunno. That’s not the purpose of this post!

Feel free to leave a comment in the section below. It’s all yours.

Till next time ………

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Why & How Pre-sessional EAP courses work for me

Hi guys!

This post was prompted by Alex’s question on a post I wrote about EAP presessional courses. His question was simple.

You teach EAP during the summer, so what happens the rest of the year?

Instead of answering in the comments section, I though I’d write a quick post, just to tell you my context which may be similar to yours.

Music Department

Sheffield University ( Department of Music)

I live in Greece and the school year is from September to end of May (private 1-2-1 teaching). I also teach Business English online. There my students are grown ups with kids, so they take summer holidays when schools are shut (same time as I do).

This means that every summer from mid June till mid September, I am free. I do not have that much work and that’s why Pre-sessional EAP courses are great for me. I ❤ them. I get to teach in a different context to what I do in the winter. I work at a university, which is really challenging and stimulating, my learners are from a different country altogether AND I get to be in the UK which I love.

Why don’t I teach EAP all year round? Firstly, I have not pursued it (not that any one has asked me to stay-just to be clear, eh?). Secondly, I have never lived in the UK during the winter, so dunno if I can handle it!! I am from the south people!

You may also ask, do I mind working all year round? Nope. I kinda have to work all year round if I want to do the things I do. I am not complaining, and anyway I am a workaholic, a shopaholic/travelaholic or just a spendaholic. I work, enjoy my job, make money from it, spend my money. Simple stuff.

Of course I miss out on the Greek summer, but if you think about it, the summer in Greece lasts from May till end of October. It’s always warm, especially on my little island.

Beach Kolumpari

So, there you have it. That’s how  and why pre-sessional courses work for me. This summer I will be going back to Sheffield University for their 10 week pre-sessional course. Cannot wait!

Do you teach pre-sessional EAP courses or a summer school course? Tell me your story in the comments below. Don’t forget to follow my blog if you are not already and give my Facebook page a thumbs up so that you do not miss notifications! You can follow me on Twitter/Pinterest/Instagram

Till next time….

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CVs and EAP tutor posts

Every year, right around Christmas, if you go to jobs.ac.uk or Baleap.org.uk, you will see EAP tutor posts being advertised. If you are interested in working in the UK during the summer, keep on reading. If you are curious about seeing what info I put in my CV, keep on reading. If none of this appeals to you, then, well, see you in my next post :).

So, let me begin by telling you what these jobs are. Pre sessional EAP courses are preparatory courses for post-graduate students or undergrads (more frequently students who want to continue their studies by doing an MA in the UK). The majority of the students are Asian students.

Step 1: Check out jobs.ac.uk or Baleap.org.uk. Find a post you are interested in. Then,

Download the Job Description

Once you have decided where you want to apply to, download the Job Description pdf. All posts have a document or page for this. Read it carefully. There are very often tables with essential criteria and desirable criteria. Make sure you fulfill the Essential criteria before you start your application.

There are also person specifications or teacher characteristics each Uni is looking for in an EAP tutor. They are usually in the same document. Read these very carefully and make notes of the ones you feel you ‘have’.

Your CV

Put your contact info at the top. If there is a reference code for the job, have that at the top as well.

Summary

Have a short summary of your qualifications and your work experience (very short summary!!!).

Start with your Work Experience. I use bullet points. I have the most recent job at the top and move down chronologically. I have experience teaching EAP, so I mention what this experience is ( I use bullet points and mention what my duties as an EAP tutor were).

Work

Personal Skills/ Competencies

Write your CAN DOs/ Person specifications: This is where the notes you made will come in handy. Say what you do well. How you work with others. Your personality traits. Do not make things up because when you have the interview you will get a questions along the lines of “How do you work with others?” Or ” What can you bring to our programme?” Or ” Talk about a difficult moment and tell us how you dealt with it.”

If you feel like an ‘expert’  in something, say where.

Move on to Qualifications/ Education:  I include my grades and specific information about my Master’s degree (very brief though. One line long) and my Delta module 3 spcialism (it was on academic speaking, so very relevant in this case- again one sentence long).

Articles/Publications

If you have written anything, include it in your CV.

Awards/ Scholarships

If you have been awarded a scholarship, mention that as well.

Conferences/ Presentations

Have you given any presentations at conferences or online? Put them in your CV.

Other Skills

This is where I put down my IT skills and languages.

THE END

No hobbies in this CV people. Who cares if you swim? 🙂 🙂

Top Tips

Keep the information you mention relative to the job. You are applying for a job that will ask you to focus on the teaching of academic reading/writing/speaking/ attending lectures, presentation skills etc. The fact that you have a lot of experience teaching young learners arts and crafts does not really matter. The fact that you talk IELTS does. So, keep your CV to the point.

Sure you have done a lot in your career, but only mention what matters.

Don’t have too much white space.

If you went to a conference back in 1988, it doesn’t matter. It’s too old!

Keep your CV two pages long. The people recruiting teachers for these jobs do not have all day long to read your CV.

Sheffield University ( Department of Music)

Sheffield University ( Department of Music)

Want more info? Check out this post on EAP interview questions and pre-sessional courses.

Of course I am not a CV expert. I did get advice from a website that gives free CV advice though. So, good luck everyone! I will be in Sheffield this summer :). I hope you found this post helpful. Remember to follow my blog (check sidebar ofn how to do this) and maybe even give my facebook page a ‘like’?

Delta books

Thanks for stopping by!!!

 

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Top EAP resources part 2

My top (online) EAP resources part 2

After writing my first post on some of the online English for Academic Purposes resources I use and since my next pre sessional EAP course (6th!) is just around the corner, I thought it was time for round two. Time to write about some more online EAP resources I use/ will use.  Some of these websites are solely geared towards EAP, but others can be used for general English as well.

Online EAP resources

Englishcentral

This website has a lot of videos which you can tell your students to watch as a self access study task. The videos focus on various elements and there are level descriptors. What I really like about this website is that on each video there are tabs. Watch/ Learn/ Speak. You can tell your learners to watch a video and then do the follow-up exercises. Some are gap filling tasks. After that they can practise as there is a recording button and the icing on the cake is that they get feedback on how they said the word. How great is that? I often send my learners to the Pronunciation courses.  There is also an academic English course worth checking out (Academic courses).

 Various corpora
True story: I was writing a blog post the other day and was a bit confused about which preposition should follow the word feedback, so I asked people on Facebook if the could suggest a website which would enable me to see words in use and the most common prepositions used after these words. I got lots of comments (Thank you everyone : )) and the two that I have been using ever since are just the word and the British national corpus.Getting your learners to use corpora is imperative as they often do not know how a word. Finding the right preposition is also another difficulty students may have. By using the corpora they will find examples of the words in sentences. Just the word has examples of correct and incorrect usage as well as a tab that shows how frequently a word followed by a preposition is used.
music-department pin

 

Baleap. org

Baleao is where I normally go to look for EAP jobs. It is also where you can find links to EAP related websites.There were two links that I didn’t know of. I checked them out and am now presenting them to you. The first one is the Prepare for Success website. You can send your students to this website during the first week of the EAP course if this is held in the UK. There is a lot of information about p[preparing yourself and studying in the UK (videos/texts followed by tasks which provide feedback) which are useful for your international students ( mainly newcomers).


 
 The other website that I found interesting is the Academic English Online website (Queen Mary University of London). This website has different tabs which focus on various EAP skills. I particularly liked the academic writing tab. You can press the academic tab and find other tabs with information about different features of academic writing. There are exercises which are also followed by feedback. Once again, your students can go to this website as part of a self access study task.
 
 
 
 

Edufind.com
Here you can find an online grammar. There are clear tabs for grammatical phenomena. Your students can find rules followed by examples and sometimes even counter examples. The grammar is categorised by parts of speech. The icing on the cake is that after your learners check rules, they can practice the grammar by doing short exercises and/or a thorough test.

 

 
Resources on universities’ websites

These are websites that do not require signing in or registering. The resources are free. The University of Kent  has free pdf files on all the academic skills. You can find information and mini lesson plans on listening, reading, writing, critical thinking and speaking. The writing development center on Newcastle University’s website.You can give this to your students for self-study.  The university of Reading also has a website with lots of study tips for learners and information about punctuation, grammar and so on.

Mendeley

Your students can use Mendeley to reference and organise their Pdfs.

Good Presentation skills vs. Bad presentation skills videos

I very often use these two videos when I teach presentation skills.

Delivering a bad presentation: spot the mistakes

Delivering a good presentation: identify the good points.

3 minute thesis

This is actually something like a competition held by the University of Queensland. We used it at Sheffield uni this year. These videos are great to practice listening, to get your learners to understand what a thesis, and they can look at the presentation skills as well.

music-department pin

Read my 1st post about EAP resources here.  Subscribe to my blog if you like what I have to say. Connect with me on Pinterest/ Instagram.Do you have any other favourites? Feel free to comment below!

Till next time……