Thursday 17 October
Katherine Bilsborough
ELT Writer and Teacher Trainer - Author of 100+ course books and online courses. Trained 5000+ teachers. Using my experience to help ELT educators and writers develop their materials writing skills
Word of mouth
Every week, after publishing this newsletter, I get messages from people who have read it and who have either discovered something new or been reminded of something they’d forgotten existed. This week I got more messages than usual, mainly from people who had signed up for Oliver Burkeman’s newsletter. It was lovely to hear from them and to feel I’d done something useful in mentioning it. One of the messages I got was from my nephew. He doesn’t work in ELT. He’s an associate professor at the University of Southern Denmark, specialising in Ecology and Evolution. He was familiar with Burkeman’s work but he referred to something else I’d mentioned in the section about things I’d learnt from my 17-month old granddaughter. I thought I’d share it with you. In last week’s newsletter, I’d said, “Teaching someone else something, or explaining how something works to someone else, is an easy way to consolidate learning and discover gaps that need filling.” Owen told me about the Rubber Duck debugging method for computer coding (which he does a lot of). In his words, ‘It’s an established technique in computer science where you explain the code out loud to a rubber duck. This forces you to think clearly, and in the process you figure out a solution to your problem.’ You can read about it here. There are lots of things I love about this exchange but the main thing is the idea that something useful in one branch of education or work can easily be transported over to our own world. We need to look further afield for inspiration and new learnings sometimes. I’m sure most of us do this anyway, maybe without even realising it. In my world as a materials writer it happens when I get an idea for a text or story from something like a Netflix series I’m watching or a conversation with my neighbour who is a farmer. Creativity is all about noticing things and making connections after all. It’s probably a good idea to connect with people in different work spheres on LinkedIn, or at least in different areas of Education.
What do you think? Do you do that?
Authenticity in materials and in our teaching
I recently posted some thoughts about authenticity on LI and it generated some very thought-provoking mini discussions with useful comments and references. I won’t repeat everything here but you might like to read the thread here if it’s a topic that interests you.
Frank C. mentioned two interesting publications. The first was Alex Gilmore's (2007) article "Authentic materials and authenticity in foreign language learning" published in Language Teaching. I hadn’t read it so I looked for it and was really pleased to find a more recent article written by the author and available to download from his website. If you’re interested, you can find it here.
His second recommendation was a book by Freda Mishan (2005) called "Designing Authenticity into Language Learning Materials". I hadn’t heard of this and I wondered if it might be a bit dated. But I managed to find a second hand copy for under ￡4 so I’ve bought it and will report back.
Professional Development
This week’s learning has come from a couple of sources.
I attended an informal coffee chat on Zoom organised by Rachael Roberts . I don’t often go along to these but I’m so glad I made the effort. It was lovely to talk to people who work in ELT but aren’t immediately related to my specific work. Chatting gives you an opportunity to see what work other people are doing. For me, it’s interesting to see the range of niche contexts that people are working in. I’ve been thinking a lot about niches recently. If someone has expertise in English language teaching and is also a specialist in another area, such as Law, for example, it makes sense that they are the ideal person to teach lawyers English for their workplace. Re-reading this it looks like I’m stating the obvious but I’ve been in a position where I’ve been teaching English to, for example, pilots. And obviously I have no specialist knowledge of flying. I know the argument about not needing specialist knowledge of course, but just imagine if an English teacher did have that knowledge too.
I also attended a Society of Authors online event which they called a ‘Sustainability Network Event’. ?I didn’t really know what to expect but some of you might be aware of my interest in sustainability, both in ELT and Education as a whole and also in a broader sense. I was disappointed with the turnout. There were only about 12 of us and four of these were committee members. I’m not sure what to think to be honest. Are people suffering from sustainability fatigue?
TESOL Spain
This week I received a reminder that the deadline to send in a proposal for the TESOL Spain convention in 2025 was on Tuesday 15 October so on Monday I got my act together to fill in all the forms and send that in. If my proposal gets accepted, I’ll be leading a workshop with the title ‘How can I become a materials writer?’ It’s a question I get asked more than any other so I figured it might be useful. Fingers crossed now.
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Down time and a bit of indulgence
One important thing I’ve done this week is to book a short break next month for my husband and me in the not-too-far-away city of San Sebastian. It’s only two nights but because of this I’ve booked a special hotel room overlooking the sea and I’ve asked a friend about the best places to eat fresh fish, so that I can book ahead of time and not be disappointed. I don’t usually do this kind of planning and it feels decadent. But even the planning stage has given me a boost. I’ve also bought tickets to see one of my all time favourite bands who are playing in the Basque Country for the first time. That’s where the idea came from. The reason I’m including this in my newsletter is because I think it’s really important for us freelancers who work from home, and often work non-stop, to pause now and then, and give ourselves a treat.
What treat have you planned for yourself recently?
Writing
A quiet but steady week in writing for me. I’ve written:
… an end of year test and a welcome test, for a digital product
… activities to go with some of the readings and listenings I wrote last week
… a second (and maybe final) draft of a blog post
… feedback on materials writing assignments for course participants
… some ChatGPT prompts to get information about how levels of English in the CEFR align with levels of English in state schools across India
… notes in the form of a big spidergraph for a workshop I’d like to do at a teachers’ event
… my TESOL Spain proposal
… this newsletter
Thank you
As always a big thank you for reading, writing, commenting, subscribing, and interacting.
Publishers: India, USA, UK. Awarded author, NEP NCF reviewer, editor, children's & YA fact, fiction, textbk, PGT Eng, SST. Workshops: Storytelling, environment, writing, crafts, values [email protected], benitasen.com
3 个月Katherine, enjoyed your observations, as always. I use the rubber duck method often in my smaller sessions. Even more effective is to have another student (the duck) try it out so the narrator knows if s/he got the process right.
Profesora de Inglés en CAIT Versatile Language Solutions y Colegio San Maximiliano Kolbe. Intérprete y Traductora en Propio Language Services. Traducciones, Clases y Redacción en Inglés y Espa?ol.
5 个月Hi, Katherine! I loved the Rubber Duck debugging method! I agree with you when you say other disciplines can teach us a lot. I try to stay open-minded about learning a little bit of everything because yeah, you never know when something you thought was totally unrelated to your field might indeed come in handy. As I mostly teach adults, I talk with people from different professions all the time. That gives me an insight into their fields, and when possible, I apply what I learn to something in my profession. And I guess that when you are a teacher, even when you're "relaxing" watching Netflix or listening to music, you sometimes think how you can use that in a class. It's just great to be able to show our students how language and culture are everywhere, and connect the dots in our lessons. Thanks for another inspiring article!
Helping you improve your English fast through intensive 1-2-1 personalised courses in my Bristol home; fluency, flavoursome food & fun. Expert tuition for middle managers to accelerate listening and speaking skills fast.
5 个月Also, the word 'buffet' was interesting in an aviation context. My ex was a pilot so I'm familiar with quite a lot of specialist aviation and meteorological vocabulary.
Helping you improve your English fast through intensive 1-2-1 personalised courses in my Bristol home; fluency, flavoursome food & fun. Expert tuition for middle managers to accelerate listening and speaking skills fast.
5 个月With regard to your comments about teaching pilots, I've had quite a bit of teaching experience with French air traffic controllers. One thing they're supposed to do, BUT NEVER DO, is ask questions the English way (ie with an auxiliary or, in the case of 'be' with inversion of the subject and verb). This is because an English question can NEVER be misunderstood as an instruction. A very interesting and good point, don't you think? One of the few times the clunky English question method has an advantage.