Teachers and students.

Last night, an ex-student and friend of mine and I got together for a pint and a chat about our summer holidays and the three-week language course he did in Dublin. As he was feeling rather nostalgic about his Irish experience, we drank, yes, you guessed: Guinness.

Between sips, it was very interesting to hear his reactions to the course and he has agreed to write something on this for my other website. However, what struck me was his response to a question asked by one of his summer course tutors. The question was ‘What is more important, a highly motivated student or a highly motivated teacher?’. The teacher was expecting an answer that indicated motivation levels to be about 50:50, whereas my friend said 40% student, 60% teacher. This apparently left the teacher a little flummoxed, although I don’t really know why. As my friend pointed out, well motivated teachers can motivate their students, but well motivated students cannot really motivate a teacher (and should not be expected to). Hence, in part, the 60% weighting towards the teacher. The other part of the 60% reflects the students’ perception of a teacher. A teacher, especially when dealing with adult learners, needs to be able to, almost, give off an aura of confidence and competence, otherwise the students’ will question whether they can really learn something from this person. In street terms, it is this ‘respect’ thing and it is understandable. And this is why my friend wants to be taught by someone who appears to be worth learning from. This sounds perfectly logical to me.

Good teachers who are obviously interested in their subjects, come across as being well-motivated and motivating. I know this from my own learning experiences. But there is also a collateral effect, if you like, in that well motivated teachers can create well motivated students. Well motivated students may even develop a greater level of interest in subjects being taught and go off and read up on these things. Bingo, job done. The students are teaching themselves, or at the very least learning how to learn.

Generating enthusiasm and interest is something I attempt to do in my own teaching. This is the teacher as a facilitator thing. It does seem to work and attention levels in-class are higher as a result and I continue to be asked for advice on how to develop language skills outside the classroom. This is encouraging.

Alas in the majority of the real world, teachers are not valued highly enough by society – which translates into them being poorly paid and thus possibly poorly motivated. Then there is the fact that poorly paid professions do not good people attract. And you have a big problem. Mix this with disciplinary problems at secondary school level and the problems are magnified considerably. Not good. Our youth are our future. They are an investment. Invest well and positive yields are more likely. Do not invest and you get no return on equity.

The point of all my blathering? Good teachers are worth their weight in Platinum. Good students know this. Our leaders, in general, do not, or do not want to know. After all, there is no profit in teaching, is there? Er, well, ever heard of something known as ‘research and development’, Mr Politician, sir? Or would you rather just add a nice new set of missiles to your country’s armoury?

Short termism ain’t good.

Teaching by not teaching

While drifting around the www looking for information on flash photography I came across this quote:

“The trick to education, is to teach people in such a way that they don’t realize they’re learning until it’s too late.”

The person who uttered these wonderful words was the late Harold Eugene Edgerton, MIT professor and flash photography pioneer.  Sounds as though he was one heck of a teacher too.  I one hundred percent agree with his approach to education, but I have found that some students are not clever enough to understand that they are learning, until it is too late.  Then there are those who don’t want to learn anything in the first place.

Anyway, the success of this approach depends on how skilful the teacher is in teaching by not teaching, well, by not using obvious techniques.  Indeed, all teachers need to be taught the ability to teach stealthily.  Generally, as I have noticed from being on both sides of the desk, if you make learning interesting and it ceases to be a chore and starts to become a pleasure.  Once the chore factor has been removed, real progress can be made.

I do try to employ Edgerton’s approach, mainly by keeping the atmosphere in my lessons quite light and, this is really important: by showing an interest in what I am teaching and in who I am teaching.   And I just love it when those who attend my classes show real signs of progress.  Talk about job satisfaction.

End of pontification.

Miffed, I am.

I got the ‘we want to do more speaking’ comment from my students today.

Yet they make no attempt to try using English while working in pairs or groups as they do one of the activities I have set them. This is despite my repeatedly telling them that they need to speak in English.

It’s no good, they just don’t get it. They don’t realize that by simply trying to use English at all times, they will become more fluent, and overcome their lack of self-confidence problems.

Yes, I know there is the Italian fear of making a ‘brutta figura’, but we are all adults, we can be mature about this. Make mistakes and you learn. Clam up for fear of making yourself look stupid, and you will not learn. I’m sorry, but you really don’t have time to play such games. Make an effort, as some have and do, and the English course can make the difference between being offered a 3 month zero pay internship, or being offered a paying position with a company that can offer real future prospects.

The choice is yours. I cannot work miracles.

English, like it or not, is perceived as being an essential skill for those who want to go places.

No English, no party.

Saturday night’s all right for…….

….working!  Yes, that’s right.  I’m working.  Other half and little one have gone off down to Genova.  This means that I can get on with preparing for a meeting on Monday.   The meeting will be about a new course I’m cooking up with another guy.  This other guy is an expert on certain things financial – so he can deal with the vocational stuff, while yours truly will concentrate on the best way of getting people to talk about certain aspects of financial data in English.  I’m not going to be any more specific than that.

Anyway, while listening to a bit of Yes and downing a drop or two of red wine, I’m trying to persuade those old creative juices to flow – which, I’m happy to say they are doing.  At least I’ve got some experience at planning workshop type courses now.  Another course which I planned and ran is to be held for the third time down in Rome.  The first time I ran this course it went better than I had hoped for and the second time was even better.  The course participants were most complimentary, or so I heard from my colleague.

I begin my course planning process by thinking about the objective, then I’ll spend some time hopping around the world wide web hunting for information and potential material.  Once I’ve got this, I’ll start drafting a structure which will provide a route towards the final objective.  The activities I’ll come up with could be thought of as being feeding stops on the way towards the destination.   Once I’ve fed all the information  I think is necessary to those doing the course, then I can start them on the final exercise which attempts to tie everything together and thus hits the objective.  That is the theory anyway.

My oh my, this process sounds quite straightforward when put down on ‘digital’ paper, but it can be quite testing.  Once I’m happy with the road and the stops, I can start to build a presentation.  These presentations buck the trend of presentations generally, seeing as I’ll include rather more on my slides than I would if I were presenting to mother tongue speakers.  I find this aids comprehension, which keeps everything going where I need it to go.

Right, back onto the road.  I’m not quite there yet in terms of direction and stops,  but I want to have a reasonable idea before Monday’s meeting.

Just in case you think I’m a work-o-holic, I should add that I spent some of the afternoon wandering around with my camera taking a few pics.  I have not reviewed them yet, some I’m not sure whether I’ve got anything that I really like.

OK, I’m signing off for now.  Back to the grindstone.  Enjoy your Saturday evening!

Italians and language learning.

I’ve heard this comment many times from my Italian students. It basically goes ‘Italians are not very good at/incapable of learning other languages’. Well, I have an appropriate response to this oft made comment: ‘bollocks’ (si equivala approssimante a ‘palle’ in italiano, credo).

Sorry about the slight vulgarity, but sometimes it is one of the best ways to get your message across.

Italians are just as capable as anyone else of learning other languages, indeed, Italy has quite a multi-lingual population.

In Italy, as opposed to the UK, I’ve met loads of people who speak a second or a third language. French and Spanish are common second languages, as are English and German, and that is without mentioning all the various dialects which exist here, some of which are considered to be genuine languages separate from Italian, I should point out.

So come on all you Italian language students, basta negatività, as the Nike ad goes ‘just do it’. All you need is some motivation and application and it can be done. Yes, I know some are more ‘portati’ (gifted/naturally able) than others, but ‘where there’s a will, there’s a way’, to coin an old English saying.

To see what Italian’s are capable of take a look at Rob’s blog Wind Rose Hotel and you will see just how well an Italian can write in English. And Rob is by no means alone, I can assure you.  There is a young lady I know called Caterina who speaks English fantastically well.  There are many others too.

So, saying Italians cannot learn other languages is absolute, total, and utter bollocks.

Climbs down from soap box.

Creative juices

Trying to design activities for teaching people how to use English in meetings and discussions situations. Coming up with something original, enjoyable and effective is not at all easy, I can tell you. Thinking of using football as a theme in some way. It’s difficult to find an Italian who does not like the game, so you can play on this at times to get, all male, classes talking for hours. And they do do all the talking. I know sweet nothing about the game, apart from the fact that you use a ball and that people quite like fighting about it. Bit like religon in some ways, is football. Good excuse for a bust up. I digress. Anyway using footy as a subject is just about a dead cert in terms of gererating interest. Think I will explore this avenue. Puts thinking cap on.

Then there is the fact that my mind seems to grind to a halt once the temperature soars over 35°c, which means the interface between the thinking cap and my dear old grey matter gets all sweaty and all those creative impulses disappear down the waterfall that is my forehead.

Time to entertain the baby. Must go.