I haven’t posted here for quite a while and people may think this is because I have either not done anything since August or because I have done too much and haven’t got the time to blog. Neither of them is true.

The second part of the year has been really busy as I started the second year of my PhD at the Open University and keep teaching a couple of hours at the ELTU at the University of Leicester. Work on the IATEFL and the BC TeachingEnglish website is still going on as usual. Besides that I have been trying to pen a couple of articles and book chapters. Open for business as usual. The difference is that I have mainly transferred my reflections to my private research blog. It is there that I have spent most of my blogging hours.

Nonetheless, 2012 is starting and, as most people, I have made my resolutions and one of them is to be back to my ELT Blog, which this January is becoming  6 years old! It all started with the Hornby Summer School is Sao Paulo with Bee introducing us to the idea of blogging. I found it really interesting and now I keep 4 of them

So many things have changed in the last couple years and here are some pics just to celebrate people who have been important and influencial in my ELT life and the friends I have made – and lost – on the way.

Hornby Summer School - Brazil, January 2006

Winner - British Council Innovation Awards 2007

Hornby Scholarship 2008-09

Open University Scholarship 2009-present

With heartfelt thanks to Julian Wing, Sara Walker and Nella De La Fuente.

I have just read this article at The Guardian on Eric Schmidt’s Mac Taggard lecture where we condemns the British education system for promoting the divorce between arts and science. It maybe a quite simplistic view, but generally speaking  I think he has a point here. Most primary schools in this country tend to have a very holistic approach to education, but when children enter secondary education this certainly materialises in a quite dramatic way. Children are then encouraged to focus on language and maths, with the Arts being regarded as luxury that will not take you anywhere in life. Get your GCSEs in English, Maths and a Science and you will be alright…

Long gone are the times when people used to be polymaths – when you could be a painter, a scientist, a poet and a politician, and all of these aspects of your education contributed to form you as an educated individual. Even the other day a friend of mine was really surprised by the fact that I, as an English language teacher, also had a strong interest in Metal music, liked history, painting and golf, as if these interests were incompatible. How would he react if I had told him that my favourite subject at school was biology? Not that I saying that I’m a polymath -  far from it! I’m not that pretentious. What I am trying to say is that the broader your interests, the richer your experiences and understanding of life are likely to be. The problem is that nothing in our education system, or in our society as a whole, seems to foster this.

Sir Ken Robinson gave a marvellous talk for TED about 5 years ago on creativity and education and it does resonate with some of the issues raised by the Google chairman today. Links below

Eric Schmidt’s Mac Taggard Lecture_ Text

Eric Schmid’s MacTaggard Lecture_ YouTube

Sir Ken Robinson’s TED lecture

On the LMCS front, we had a nice discussion on using films in the classroom fielded by Kieran Donaghy and we are now having an Open Forum on Fantasy in literature and other forms of media. I have also finished editing the document on the discussion on Contemporary Poetry in ELT – it can now be downloaded from the files section of the website.

On the Extensive Reading front, we have finished the judging process for the Language Learner Literature 2011 Awards and already have the winners, but you will have to wait till after the ER World Congress in Japan in September to find out who they are   Besides that we are already setting the scene for the ERF to have a more robust presence at the IATEFL Conference  and we have been discussing with the President and with the British Council ways to make it happen – exciting times ahead.

As for writing, I had to review a couple of articles for publication, a book chapter and I’m now starting to think about the speaker proposal for the IATEFL Conference in Glasgow next year. If you think people get involved with the Conference for only a week, think it again!

When it comes to my research, I have been through some software training sessions. I am also working on the first batch of data and should start designing a survey as soon as September starts.

Goodness me, where has my summer gone??

It is not that uncommon to get some essays with no spelling mistakes at all and with just a few grammar errors submitted by students who in class and in the exams produce much poorer pieces of writing in both aspects. This may cause a certain conflict in our minds about how to deal with these differences in performance.

What we seem to forget is that the process of writing essays is fundamentally different from that of writing in class or in exam situations for a series of reasons: (a) students do drafts and peer correction, (b) they type their essays and the Word underlines not only the spelling mistakes, but also punctuation and grammar mistakes, so good students are usually able to spot them and correct them themselves before submitting, and (c) they may ask another colleague to proofread, which is just good academic practice and we are always preaching them to do so.

The whole issue also raises a number of questions:

• If we ‘want’ students to produce a piece of writing that is similar to the ones in class and in the exam, why do we ask them to write essays that are produced in completely different circumstances? Isn’t it because we want them also to practice process writing and spot mistakes that, ideally, will not be repeated in the test?
• Are we correcting essays just to find grammar and spelling mistakes or are we interested in seeing if they are able to use some of the bits of language that we taught them?
• If an essay is OK in terms of grammar, shouldn’t we then be happy to turn our attention to the argument/ideas  problems and help our students to start dealing with more complex issues of academic stance and style?

As I see it, writing an academic essay in a language learning context is a process that ideally should cut down on gross language errors and just leave behind argument problems. If students have been through the processes of drafting, reviewing, having it peer corrected and proofread, they should end up with a reasonably decent text model which they can try to emulate in exam circumstances.

My own approach to essay writing is to treat it as a teaching activity and an opportunity students have to practise writing as a process.

I remember last year I was designing a research questionnaire for teachers and one of my first questions was Where are you from? I then submitted the draft to my supervisors and one of them commented something on these lines:

 What does this question mean? What do you want to know? Where the person was born? Or where the person lives? Or where they feel they belong to? Most of us come from many places.

She could not be more spot on, as usual. When people ask me where I’m from I always feel uncomfortable because I know people expect a simple answer, which I cannot really provide. I was born in Brazil from multicultural parents, an unusual combination of Saxon, Nordic and Luso-Spanish blood. I never felt I belonged to the place were I was born because my cultural affiliations are completely alien to it. The first language I learnt was Portuguese, which I hardly ever use if I can help because I don’t think I sound like myself speaking it. The language of my heart is English. My education is English. My cultural influences – literature, music, arts, history, philosophy – are English. My life is in England. So, where am I from?

I don’t think I’m a case apart though – there are many ‘Children of the Empire’ scattered around. I have a friend born in London from eastern European parents; the first language she learnt was the language of her ancestors, and she has now been living in the continent for years. I wonder where she feels she is from. I have another friend who was born in an African country from Asian parents, but who has been living here since she was a little child. Where is she from?

I believe identity is much more than the political state where you happen to be born in. Where you are from is much more a matter of cultural affiliation and allegiance than an accident of birth. Marguerite Yourcenar in Memoirs of Hadrian, puts the following lines in the mouth of the Roman Emperor, who, by the way, was  born in what is now Spain, but whose cultural affiliations were all Greek and who had Greece as the country of his heart:

The true birthplace is that wherein for the first time one looks intelligently upon oneself; my first homelands have been books, and to a lesser degree schools.

The problem is that you cannot come up with all this philosophical reasoning when someone on the train just asks you ‘Where are you from?’ They will think you come from Bedlam! I think the next time someone asks me the bloody question I will answer, ‘From Middle-Earth.’

My heartfelt thanks to everyone who has contributed with a chapter and to everybody who has supported the project, especially Graeme Hodgson and Sara Walker.

Click on the link to download the book  10 Years of Brazilian Scholarship

Last week I also shared with her a PowerPoint presentation about some differences between families in the 50s and nowadays, which was the topic of the lesson. Just to set the spirit of the times I opened it with a photo of Elvis and another of Bono. I confess that it was a bit of tongue-in-cheek thing to do, but I also thought that it would be interesting to expose students from different cultures (most Chinese and Arabs) to some of our Western cultural icons. Very few of them knew either of the singers, but now they are blogging on Elvis and U2 and even uploading videos!

It makes me think of a remark another colleague made another day about using art in language learning. The argument is that teachers use art, music and literature because we like these things, but it does not mean that students like or want them. Point taken – certainly true -  but I also think that many times students ‘don’t like or want these things’ simply because no-one has ever given them the opportunity to enjoy them and see how much engaging they can be. I think the Elvis/Bono example is a good one.

It is really inspiring to see how some students respond positively when you propose something creative and new.

Check Yasmin’s ELT  Blog

It may sound like a witty question, but this is exactly what this book does. English through Art, published by Helbling, brings together gorgeous images kindly made available by the National Museum of Wales and combines them with activities for English language learners. There are also activities using sculpture and music.

It is a very practical book with 100 activities  and a CD room with the paintings ready to be used by the teacher. I’m really glad to have contributed with some of activites in the book and I’m particularly happy because I had the privilege of working with Hania Bociek, Kevin Parker, my PhD colleague at the Open University, and Peter Grundy who are the editors of the collection.

Heartfelt thanks to Peter, who came up with the idea and set up the workshop in Cardiff, which was the trigger for the generation of the activities. The best thing of this enterprise, though, was to make friends with Hania, who is such a  wonderful person and a great professional.

Their presentation highlighted two major problems: language proficiency and teacher motivation. presenters singled out language knowledge as a key factor contributing to teachers’ lack of confidence, sense of frustration and fear of losing face in front of students. They also pointed out that teacher training programmes tend to ignore this fact focussing on methodology and failing to provide some language development lessons.

Another factor brought up in the presentation was teacher demotivation due to poor working conditions and low payment. Thanks Gifty for such a passionate and inspiring delivery

Some solutions were proposed and they also presented the state of  English language teaching in Kerala, India, as a case study and a model to be considered.

An event that can be somehow related to their presentations was the British Council signature event on the Role of English in Developing  Countries

Another thing that really made me happy at Brighton was to meet Oscar Montoya,  my Hornby colleague at Marjon in 2008-09 . It is always a pleasure to me someone from the Hornby Family

I don’t think there is a one-size-fits-all regarding the balance between language, study skills and critical skills. It all depends on the needs of particular groups and the strengths and weaknesses they have – and it even varies from group to group studying at the same academic level

Besides that, it seems to me that even when we decide to focus on more than one of them, we still have this sort of dialectical mentality. It is always a matter of X or Y. Most of the times we still see the world in Saussurean terms of binary oppositions. Why not X and Y and Z? They can happen simultaneously if we design activities that can foster all of them, even if, unavoidably, the focus will shift from activity to activity. As I see it, the trick is to keep language, study skills and critical skills in a sort of dynamic tension.

Another issue raised was if there is a place for literature in EAP. I think there are number of things to consider.

I believe poetry, short stories and plays can also be used to teach English to EAP students. Even when students are extremely focused on their field of interest, they still have other things that appeal to them. To imagine, for instance, that an engineering student is a monolithic entity made of formulas is a misconception – they are also human beings and literature appeals to humans in all cultures, cognitively and affectively. In my experience, a short poem can be a nice little break between masses of technical articles and can create some memorable learning moments. However, I never use literature as a ‘light relief’, also because good literature is never ‘light.’ What I mean is that it can provide a nice change to students that are usually overwhelmed by academic articles. I always have a very well-defined rationale and teaching purpose for every text I use. It may be a grammar structure, or vocabulary field, or a particular skill, or the discussion of a particular issue. Literature provides the rich prompt to do that.

Another thing to bear in mind is that using literature in language teaching and learning does not mean to take our students to the depths of literary criticism. There are other approaches to it.

I think it comes back to the questions of what teaching EAP really means. Is it a matter of just training students to paraphrase and use technical vocabulary? Or is it to teach them also to become critical readers, capable of making interdisciplinary connections and develop the capacity to identify a writer’s stance, tone and purpose? I go with the second option and if this is so, a poem or short story carefully selected may be a very useful and memorable learning tool.

Sure thing you can do without it. It is perfectly possible to use only academic and general texts to do that. EAP students can live perfectly well without literature. As anyone can live without ever going to the theatre or the cinema, without looking at a painting, without music, without flowers in the garden. You can survive – it just makes your life experience a little bit poorer.