Today, my students managed to drain all my energy. I thought the day would go smoothly because we had just come back from a four day holiday, but I was entirely wrong. Firstly, the internet was abnormally slow and the connection was going up and down. My first group is online, with only one student face-to-face and she was especially chatty, wanting all my attention to her and forgetting her colleagues were online patiently waiting for my connection to work better.

In my second class, there is a boy who drives me insane. I already know him, but today he was testing my patience. He is the kind of child who pretends to be dumb and keeps asking silly questions, but not in a funny way. I would say he is kind of mean and likes to watch me suffer. Because I know what he is doing. He knows I know what he is doing. And there we have an infinite cycle of patience-testing. He wore me off in a way that I began to feel a pain in my arm and I am still feeling it until now. I refuse to die because of a misbehaved child, though.

In this boy's class there was also a student who had to stay online because she was not feeling well. At least that was what her parents had told us. So, besides having to deal with the mean boy, I also had to adapt my already planned lesson (only for face-to-face students) to a hybrid one. In addition, there was the logistics of all the gadgets necessary for a hybrid lesson. And - remember? - the connection was still working very poorly. To my surprise, when I was walking home, I saw the "sick" student walking her dog and looking healthy.

The last face-to-face lesson was also crazy, but normal crazy. My 7 year-old students cannot keep their masks covering their noses and mouth, so I am constantly saying "cover your nose", "put your mask on", "don't stand too close to your friend", "don't touch your friend's mask". And then I had to deal with a student who can't lose. He gets frustrated and doesn't want to play anything anymore. I mean, you would think games were supposed to be fun... go try and bring a simple Baamboozle or a back to the board game to a class of (mostly) spoiled 7-year-olds and your mind would be changed forever.

So, when I got home and I had only 25 minutes to feed my dogs, feed myself (only had time for some peanuts, cookies and coffee today), go to the restroom, before my final online class of the day, I was already exhausted. And I had to explain the past simple and past continuous to a group of insecure intermediate students. I don't understand why so many students reach intermediate level feeling so traumatized, like they aren't good enough. And it translates to their production, which is mostly good for their level. It is so hard for me to motivate this kind of students.

My day finally ended and I was just too tired to do anything else. But, surprise! I still had to prepare tomorrow morning's class and after that I decided to write about this insane day here. Well, insane for me, at least. I'm well aware that there are many teachers who go through worse stuff every day, but, you know, sometimes we just need to vent.

It has been a long time since my last post here and I would like to get back to my blogging activities. Nothing better to get back at it by bringing a day-in-the-life sort of post, which mostly involved me complaining about students and poor internet connection. Maybe - hopefully? - next time I will bring something more useful to share.

* This was originally posted on my old blog on 3rd June 2017.

Dogme ELT is a teaching philosophy started by a group of teachers who considered that there seemed to be an over-reliance on materials in current language teaching (Thornbury, 2006, p. 72). This discussion started when Thornbury was inspired by the filmmaker Lars von Trier who proposed a cinema without the use of special effects and props (Dogme 95 movement). In his article, (Thornbury, 2000) he questions the quantity of coursebooks and resources and wonders if there is real communication and focus on 'the inner life of the student' in these materials. He also mentions that ELT has become grammar-obsessed, often forgetting about the real use of the language. Then, he outlines some principles for this new philosophy, which would be refined later on in his and Meddings' Teaching Unplugged book.

The three key principles for a Dogme (Meddings & Thornbury, 2009, p.8) lesson are:

• It is conversation-driven;
• It is materials-light;
• It focuses on emergent language.

Image via Thornbury's Blog

Conversation is a big part of Dogme ELT in the sense that ‘the direction of the lesson is determined by what emerges in conversation between the teacher and the learners’ (Wright, J. & Rebuffet-Broadus, 2013, p.117). Therefore, the teacher has the role of a facilitator, helping learners reformulate and express their ideas clearly and also as a language advisor, when he draws attention to relevant points of the language. This idea of fluency coming first comes from the Task-Based approach, which is something that perpetrates the beliefs of Dogme. It also draws on the idea of communication as the ‘exchange and negotiation of meaningful messages’ (Meddings & Thornbury, 2009, p.9) from the Communicative Approach. However, Dogme goes beyond that view as conversation should be about ‘the people in the room’ in order to be really meaningful for the learners.

According to Meddings and Thornbury (2001b), being materials-light does not necessarily mean that coursebooks would not be allowed in the classroom, but they should not dictate or distract from the main learning opportunities of the lesson. They believe that materials should encourage dialogic learning, which means that ‘both teachers and pupils make substantial and significant contributions and through which pupils’ thinking on a given idea or theme is helped to move forward’ (Mercer, 2003, p.76, as cited in Wright, J. & Rebuffet-Broadus, 2013, p.126). This means that materials should be locally generated and always be of interest to the learners, as this way it would make learning more likely to take place.

The last of the three key principles is the focus on emergent language, which has to do with dealing with the language that emerges in the conversation process. Dogme views the learners’ language as both process and product of instruction (Meddings, L. & Thornbury, S., 2001b, p.43). It draws on the Communicative Approach’s notion of a learner-centered curriculum where the focus was more on the process of communication than on the product (i.e. the knowledge of language). However, it adds on to it when it gets the learner’s grammar from the activities and turns it into the courses’ grammar itself. It has the learners as being agents in their own learning process, as they will determine their learning experience (Meddings & Thornbury, 2009, p.18).

The question that remains is ‘How do we make a lesson from the material we receive?’ (Meddings, L. & Thornbury, S., 2001b, p.41). Once the conversation has started and the language has emerged, the teacher is basically free to choose from the techniques available. For instance, he can choose to focus on form, by putting learners errors on the board and conducting a debate on why the errors were made and how to correct them. The teacher can also record parts of the conversation and conduct text reconstruction activities followed by role play of an improved version of the same dialogue. In short, the teacher has at his disposal the same techniques available from the traditional training courses. As the authors point out, the important thing is to capture text in any form and put it to work ‘by improving it, rehearsing it, performing it, re-formulating it in another mode or register’ (Ibid, p.43) and also focus on language, both the weaknesses and the strengths. In the end, there should be some kind of rounding-off activity, in order to reflect on what happened in the lesson and discuss the possibilities for the future.

Thornbury actually confesses that ‘there is nothing very original in Dogme’ (Thornbury, 2005, p.3 as cited in Wright, J. & Rebuffet-Broadus, 2013, p.71). It brings ideas from the communicative approach, humanistic education, critical pedagogy and other materials-light approaches, which mean that many teachers who follow the Dogme principles, actually only incorporate some of these aspects to their teaching.

______________

References

Books

Freire, P. 1968 Pedagogy of the Oppressed Penguin

Meddings, L. & Thornbury, S. 2009 Teaching Unplugged: Dogme in English Language Teaching Delta Publishing

Thornbury, S 2006 An A-Z of ELT Macmillan

Wright, J. & Rebuffet-Broadus, C. 2013 Experimental Practice in ELT: Walk on the Wild Side The Round Publications

Articles

Meddings, L. & Thornbury, S. 2001 'Dogme and the coursebook'
http://thornburyscott.com/tu/MET3coursebook.htm (12.11.13)

Meddings, L. & Thornbury, S. 2001 'Using the raw materials: A Dogme approach to teaching language' MET vol 10, no 4, 2001

Meddings, L. & Thornbury, S. 2002 'Using a coursebook the Dogme way: Making sure it's the dog that wags the tail' MET vol 11, no 1, 2002

Meddings, L. & Thornbury, S. 2003 'Dogme still able to divide ELT'
http://www.theguardian.com/education/2003/apr/17/tefl.lukemeddings (11.11.13)

Nield, D. 2005 'Spirit of Dogme' English Teaching Professional, Issue 41, Nov 2005

Thornbury, S. 2000 'A Dogma for EFL' IATEFL Issues, 153, 2.

What is Baamboozle?

It's a website where teachers can create their own educational games or use one of the countless already made by other teachers. My students from all ages and levels love it because there are bonuses, extra points, swapping points, "bombs", and the possibility of playing in groups or individually.

It's basically a hidden cards game, where students should choose a number and do what is asked in the card. Students do not operate it, it is the teacher who projects the game on the screen and opens the card the teams choose. However, if you use breakout rooms, students may operate the game, too.

Bamboozle

Yes, but there is a paid option where you have more space for uploading images, you can create a copy and edit other teacher's games. Personally, I can make do with the free version because there are already thousands of games available. But I wouldn't oppose if my school would be willing to pay for a yearly subscription for the teachers to use the same account and have more options to create games.

Screenshot from the Bamboozle website - An example of how students see the game

Suggestions on how to use Baamboozle in your online class

Group games - That's how I usually play it. I divide my students into groups and they can help each other complete the tasks in the cards. Even though it's one group at a time, the others are really interested in what the other group answers because it's after all a competition. They can choose their group's name and it's a lot of fun. They also enjoy the "win 50 points" and "swap points" kind of power ups - although it seems unfair, they don't mind.

Treasure hunt for young learners - There are many pre-made games of treasure hunt for the online classes. My young learners love it. There are also many movement games where students have to do the action shown in the card (which can be a fun gif). It's nice to have some games saved in case you have 5 to 10 minutes to spare at the end of your lesson.

Speaking practice - With my one-to-one students and older learners, I also use Bamboozle for speaking practice. There are IELTS questions, FCE questions, and you can set a timer for each student to speak about the theme that's in the card.

Vocabulary fun games - With teens and lower level groups, I always like to have saved some options for when we have extra time. For example, "name 5", "think of something", or alphabet games.

__________

Have you ever used Baamboozle? How do you use it? What have you fund most useful from this website? Share in the comments! :)

* This was originally posted in my former blog - Today, my students - on 30th May 2017.

I became interested in Dogme after attending a three-day course with Luke Meddings in Brazil in 2012. I like to say that, since then, I have found a teaching philosophy that I truly believe in. After the course, I bought the Teaching Unplugged book and began including many of the activities into my lessons. Also, I wanted to see if a Dogme approach would work with young learners, so I began creating my own activities, too.

I was finally able to share the results of my experience applying Dogme inspired activities in my lessons - it wasn't possible to teach a whole course based on the approach because the school did not offer that much teaching flexibility - at a teaching conference in Brazil in 2013. To my surprise, Luke Meddings himself attended our talk and gave us some really nice feedback. He also gave the plenary talk closing the conference.

There, he talked about taking steps towards a more humanistic approach to teaching, preached by the Brazilian educator Paulo Freire (1968), who proposes a new relationship between teachers, students and the society, meaning that the class is a place to seek knowledge instead of transmitting it. This is reflected in the view that Dogme has of 'language learning in a profoundly human way' (Meddings & Thornbury, 2003).

This humanistic approach reminded me of my own experience as a language learner, where lessons and language items would be more memorable when the teacher personalised the activities, asking about our interests, and really showing that they mattered. That was not the rule, though, as most lessons were very book-centered and only a few teachers were truly interested in what a bunch of children/teenagers had to say.

Dogme also has a strong view on the importance of dealing with emerging language. According to Meddings and Thornbury (2009, p. 8), 'rather than being acquired, language (including grammar) emerges' as an organic process and given the right conditions. And, from what I have learned by experimenting with Dogme, it is the most challenging part, especially for teachers who are non-native speakers. However, the confidence to deal with emerging language comes with time, and it is extremely important to take notes of what students are saying during the activities.

Finally, as I have been saying in many of my posts here, I believe coursebooks are a useful tool for teachers, but it concerns me when we become over-dependent on them and leave aside our learners' needs. The materials-light aspect of Dogme may seem impossible in contexts where teachers must follow a course book, but there are ways of incorporating activities in the lessons. It is a very good way of adding variety to the lessons and to have the students' needs in mind at the same time.

_________

References:

Freire, P. 1968 Pedagogy of the Oppressed Penguin

Meddings, L. & Thornbury, S. 2009 Teaching Unplugged: Dogme in English Language Teaching Delta Publishing

Thornbury, S 2006 An A-Z of ELT Macmillan

Coming from an ELT general English teaching context, I could find some similarities and differences between both fields. Some people would say that EAP (English for Academic Purposes) is a "more specialized" sector within ELT and this may be true, as the first came after the latter. In addition, there are other influences on EAP apart from ELT, for instance, register analysis, study skills, genre analysis, academic literacies, among others. Anyway, what is important here, is that knowing these differences will help teachers cater to the needs of EAP learners and, at the same time, use techniques that are familiar to them from an ELT background.

Time - In EAP, time is often limited, as students may already be taking the course or need to take a proficiency exam in order to be accepted in a course. Whereas in ELT, there are longer time scales.

Proficiency - Proficiency targets in EAP are frequently very ambitious, as students are coming into the field at even lower levels nowadays. In ELT, the goal is to achieve general English proficiency and this may mean different things for different students.

Focus - EAP students have an academic focus and these are defined by their specific needs. ELT students have a broader focus, which is defined by general language proficiency.

Motivation - EAP students are more often self-motivated, which is a little different from general ELT students, who often need teacher-led motivation in order to keep them coming to class.

Goals - EAP students have a clearly defined goal they are working towards, which is reaching academic independence and autonomy. For ELT students, there are students with different goals in the same class.

Material - EAP students may bring material to contribute to the lessons, as there are different fields and this helps the teacher prepare the lessons. However, there are EAP course books available in the market, which cater to general EAP skills and critical thinking following the CEFR levels. In ELT, the materials is presented by the teacher, who often chooses a course book for the level, or follows the school's programme.

Students - The most important difference between EAP students is disciplinary, which means, what subject they are planning to study. Whereas for ELT learners, the key differences can be based around culture and language.

Some similarities between both fields can be found in methods, approaches and practices. They both share: the communicative approach; task-based learning; collaborative learning; and learner-centered approach.

There are also similarities in some key skills that both EAP and ELT teachers should have. They are: planning and organization; creative skills and techniques; language analysis; communication and presentation; understanding of student behaviour, motivation and psychology; and classroom management skills. Related to those skills, Chazal (2014) points out that "EAP teachers must be able to understand and respond to their students' needs, difficulties, and learning styles".

_______________

REFERENCES

1997. R. R. Jordan. English for Academic Purposes: A Guide and Resource Book for Teachers. Cambridge University Press.

2014. Edward de Chazal. English for Academic Purposes. Oxford University Press.

Today, I'm going to tell you how I got into EAP and some basic concepts around this field that I am beginning to study for my current teaching practice.

I have never been a one-to-one teaching enthusiast. Since when I started teaching, people would ask me if I taught private lessons and I would always say 'no' for many reasons. The first one being that I am shy, thus, I was scared that I wouldn't be able to maintain a conversation with only one person. In addition, people always came to me with very specific needs, such as 'conversation lessons', 'English for traveling' or 'business English' (too busy to answer my messages, though) and I was in the beginning of my career, still doing the CELTA, etc. Finally, I just thought teaching kids and groups was more fun. So, it was easier for me to refuse them.

However, when the pandemic hit, and we had to shift to online lessons, I could learn how to use online teaching platforms, took a few courses and now I really enjoy teaching English online. So, in February this year, I decided to put up a flyer and share on social networks for one-to-one lessons. Naturally, people came to me asking for private lessons online and I accepted them. And that's basically how I got to teaching English for Academic Purposes, which is a field I was not familiar with until this year. I now have two students with very specific needs and both of them are academics.

In order to be better informed on teaching EAP students, I did some research online and found books and materials that suited our needs. Now I am learning as I go since time is of the essence for my students.

Some basics of EAP

From what I have read so far and my teaching context, the most important aspect of EAP is that it is needs driven. In other words, students learn English with a particular purpose in mind. For instance, they may want to enter a university abroad, they may be professors in a another language wanting to teach in English, or they may even already be Master's or Doctorate students who need to improve their English skills to do presentations and write essays. Thus, their goal is identifiable and describable, and should inform the EAP programme the teacher will create for them.

Similarly to ELT, EAP involves the development of the four skills in an integrated way. However, the teaching and learning of English in EAP happens so that students can operate effectively in the disciplines.  Also, there are many skills and competences in EAP, to mention a few:

• critical thinking
• study skills (e.g. citation, referencing)
• getting familiarized with the target academic culture
• development of student autonomy and independence

It is important to mention that EAP is not concerned with subject content. Rather, its goal involves developing key academic skills, language and competences. The field concerned with teaching content through language is CLIL (Content Language Integrated Learning). For example, EAP will refer to general academic vocabulary, such as 'analyze', 'evaluation', 'conclusion', 'focus on', etc.

An increasing trend in EAP is for students to begin learning at lower levels, such as A2 and lower B1. This is my teaching context. I have one A2 student working towards becoming a B1 by the end of May - we started in March - and one B1 student trying to improve her presentation skills to be able to teach in English my the end of May. This way you can see that I am also working with ambitious goals.

Generally, EAP students are highly motivated, as they have an specific goal in mind. EAP teachers should aim to keep this motivation high and learning relevant and engaging.

I believe this is the basics of EAP, just to give a general idea. Since I come from an ELT teaching context, I will try to focus on the main differences between these fields in my next post.

_______________

REFERENCES

1997. R. R. Jordan. English for Academic Purposes: A Guide and Resource Book for Teachers. Cambridge University Press.

2014. Edward de Chazal. English for Academic Purposes. Oxford University Press.

* This text was originally posted on my former blog - Today, my students... - on 16th February 2021.

I should have written this post about one year ago when it all started. However, as many of us teachers were, I was extremely busy trying to cope with the new reality. At first, I really thought "quarantine" would mean about 40 days at home, but here we are, eleven months later, still planning online lessons.

Back in March 2020, I was teaching at two schools: a general English course and a bilingual school, which meant two different perspectives. With my course students I had two 1 hour classes a week and with my school students I had five to six classes of 50 minutes a week. Luckily, both schools were using Google Classroom and Meet, so I had to learn how to use only one platform.

This was my context when everybody in Brazil were in "lockdown" and schools were closed for an indefinite period of time. Here, I would like to summarize both experiences because I think they were so different and it would be nice to share and remember them later on.

Teaching online at an English course

The first positive aspect of teaching in this context was having fewer students per classroom. My biggest class had only 12 students. This means that I could hear each one speaking, check pronunciation and do more error correction. I could give enough attention to each of them and better feedback to them and their parents in meetings. When there were still no breakout rooms available in Google Meet, I could create another meet and send them the link, so I still could do some group and pair work.

Another good thing was to have online platforms for all materials I was using. I didn't waste any time scanning books or looking for extra materials. All I had to think of when planning my lessons was how to adapt some of the activities to the new context. This helped me a lot.

I would say a negative thing about teaching at a course was that my lessons had 75 minutes before, and now they only had 60 minutes. So, in addition to all technical issues the student would have every class, I didn't have those 15 minutes and I really wish I did.

Also, there was no time for learner and teacher training. We learned new things as we went through the classes and shared our problems with our fellow teacher whenever we could. Many students were confused about how to use the apps and really how the Google Classroom worked. Some of them couldn't even upload their activities, and some of the young learners didn't have adult's assistance during the lessons.

The first - and perhaps only - positive aspect of teaching online at a regular school was to have more time with the students every week. I would meet them for 5 to 6 lessons of 50 minutes each, so I could do more activities and had more time to solve any technical problems. The syllabus was cut in half, so I had time to do projects, focus on phonics and reading activities.

This also had a downside. I had to find extra materials because I couldn't use the whole book. Also, the material we used in this school had no online resources whatsoever. I mean, zero! In 2020! Can you believe it? Anyway, it was extremely time consuming to find and adapt extra activities every week.

However, the biggest issue for me was how to deal with so many students in class at the same time. There were 25 in one class and 21 in another. Young learners tend to turn on their microphones to say the most random things in the most inconvenient times (during instructions, interrupting their peers, and so on), so this would happen a lot during one lesson.

Overall

The 2020 experience was definitely challenging. Personally, I could find many positive aspects to teaching online. The negative issues, I believe could have been less "traumatizing" if we had had time to do some learner and teacher training in advance. But how could we have foreseen what was coming? In my experience, there was little support from the coordination - it's understandable, as they were dealing with their own problems - and very little training opportunities.

* I did the drawings above - that's why they look so weird. I just took a photo of the drawings and edited a little on the photo editor. ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

I know I should have created this blog in the beginning of the pandemic, but I couldn't. There was too much going on and it was too much for me (and all of us, really) to process. However, one year after the beginning of the pandemic, I feel it's finally the time to share a few things I have been learning about teaching online, teaching children online, and why I have given up teaching at regular schools.

The only thing I can say for sure is that we will never be the same after going through a pandemic. This has affected all of us in all aspects of life. Here, I will only discuss teaching English. I will also be reposting some series I have written about on my previous blog (Today, my students...) that I will then delete, after I transfer everything from there to this place.

Anyway, I don't have any hopes up for the new blog. I will just start it. I have to begin again.