English Language Resource

STAGES, ANCHORS AND ACTORS

Wednesday, 25 April 2012 09:15

Interactive teaching involves problem solving and answering challenge questions. Setting up these activities, however, requires choreography: You would never say "dance a bit", yet we often expect our students to "discuss a bit". Every problem has its setting; every answer its context. Neglect these two points and every discussion will end with "it depends".

Let's say we want students to create a plan for investigating customer satisfaction at a fitness center. They will need:

1. the stage: you have been hired by FeelGoodGym to investigate customer satisfaction with staff, equipment, and child care. With a partner, decide how you want to measure and evaluate this.
2. the time anchor: You have 5 minutes to brainstorm approaches. (Actually, 4:30 works best). In professional life, we always have time anchors, often deadlines but also meeting duration. Teaching is no different.
3. the actors: Present your initial ideas to gym management. They will decide whether to follow up or not based on this report.

Problem-solving always requires a context, a deadline and people invovled: we need to define these in our task brief.

Teaching is a Conversation

Tuesday, 10 April 2012 09:39

No, not in the metaphorical sense - literally. The Socratic method has survived because it works. All efforts to transfer teaching and learning to technology and materials are doomed to fail as the central aspect of learning will always be the conversation. John Taylor Gatto suggests that silent time to read and think is vital - as it indeed is. But it is not until will test those ideas, not in scinilating academic discussions, but by testing them do we know if they are valid. The triumvirate of thought - action - consequence still applies.

Teacher Questions

Wednesday, 21 March 2012 09:14

Nothing annoys students more than teacher questions. The teacher asks a question that they know the answer to: "What's the rule for sentence syntax in English?" Or: "How does an expansive monetary policy affect consumer demand?" We are then surprised when no student answers. Why would they? If they know the answer, it's of no benefit to them and only shows off to the teacher (slimer!); if not, they will not risk showing it.

Teacher questions are not a part of normal conversation and should be banned. Period. If you are the teacher, students expect us to know the answer - so say it. If we want checking questions, let's write a test.

Two further kinds of questions exist: scoping questions and challenge questions. Scoping questions provide the asker with value, not the teller: "What is your major?" is a scoping question. One or two are fine, but more than that and we are interrogating; too many and students will get bored: we are learning at the students' expense. Jack Vincent discusses this concept further in his highly readable book, Sales Pitches that Snap, Crackle, and Pop.

The only questions worth asking are challenge questions: you don't know the answer; there's no right or wrong, you are genuinely interested in the answer. "What's the best way to train for a marathon?" "How would you advertise this product?" "What one thing would improve my teaching immediately?" By answering them, you add value to the student and, in language-teaching contexts. allow them to explore their language capabilities.

Advances and Continuations

Friday, 09 March 2012 11:18

How do sales teams measure the success - or failure - of a meeting?

In his workshop coming up at our school Jack Vincent (BraveNewSales) will point out that, in a drawn-out sales process, collecting advances is the way to ensure you are steering towards your goal. An advance could be: a visit by their marketing director; fixing a subsequent meeting; setting up a conference call with other constituents.

Continuations, on the other hand, are: sending a copy of a presentation; re-working a proposal; building rapport. It looks as if something is getting done, when in fact the prospect is dragging their feet, keeping you busy all the while.

In the teaching world, this explains why learning can be dull (continuations: busy work, great rapport, teacher work) or exciting (advances: added value, language topics ideas, student work).

How are you going to measure the success of your next teaching session? What advances have you made with your students?