Thursday 31 October

The creativity side of things

One of the things I had to write this week was a list of ideas for readings and listenings for some digital tests. Before starting the writing process it’s important for someone with an overview of the whole course and all its components to check that my ideas haven’t already been covered. Sometimes there’s a similar focus in a different level, for example.

As I was doing the work this week I realised that one thing I love about materials writing is finding a new and creative angle on a ‘same old’ topic. I’m not necessarily being negative when I say ‘same old’. School syllabus documents list the topics the children need to cover so there’s no moving away from the umbrella themes. These are things like clothes, the weather, food, free time activities. So the key to writing engaging content is, I think, in finding an angle that’s unique, thought-provoking and generally provokes an emotional response in the learners. This week I came up with some gems which I’m really proud of and hoping the editors will agree. I had some feedback like, ‘Wow! How on earth did you come up with this one?’ for the previous level and this virtual pat on the back is very welcome, as anyone who works remotely and/or is a freelancer knows.

I’ve also realised recently that the very best time for me to do creative work (including gathering ideas like these) is between 11 and 1 in the morning. I haven’t done any special research but I have noticed that this has been the case on several occasions recently.

When are you at your most creative?

Speedy responses

One thing I wrote this week was an email to a publisher to ask for information about when I was going to get paid. I had a response withing 3 minutes. That has to be? a record. It got me thinking about the protocol of responses. How long is too long to have to wait for a response? Do I respond quickly enough? Does it have to be the same day? Maybe within 24 hours? Are we expected to respond over the weekend? I don’t have the answers, just lots of questions. There are obviously contextual issues tied to the answers too, along with practical ones.

Here's an article in Forbes that presented some research findings about 9 years ago. I wonder if anything-s changed since then. Also, I wonder how WFH affects the data.

Weekends

I had an interesting work-related conversation this week about whether it was a good idea to work at the weekend if you didn’t really have to. For freelancers this is something that must come up frequently, mainly because we can choose when we work, up to a point. From what I can see there are two main schools of thought. Let’s call them A and B.

A. It’s a good idea not to work over the weekend. That way I get a complete break and feel rested and ready for work when I start work Monday.

B. It’s a good idea to do a bit of work over the weekend if I can because then I have less work to do during the week and I don’t get so tired.

Obviously both A and B are valid and work for different people, or even the same people at different moments. I used to be in B mode a lot but lately, more frequently, I’m in A mode and when I feel myself think about going into my study on a Saturday or Sunday, I stop myself, and do something unrelated to work instead.

So, which are you, an A or a B? Or do you do a bit of both?

Professional Development

Between writing last week’s newsletter and this week’s I ran a session on our materials writing course about writing teacher notes for student’s materials. Afterwards I spent a bit of time reflecting on what I’d learnt during the session. It’s a privilege to pop into break out rooms and observe discussions going on between course participants from all around the world. What always strikes me, and very much so this week, is that when it comes to materials writing, an awful lot depends very much on the context. One example is related to teacher notes and the ‘extra information’ we sometimes add in them. In this case, the example was a note about the ‘garbage’ being a US English equivalent of rubbish in British English. In some places, this information isn’t useful or indeed necessary. In other places it is useful and it could be important. The beauty of writing materials for our own classes is that we can be the judge of this. But we should always be wary of making assumptions. Which brings me nicely onto …

Making assumptions

We all do it all of the time. I’m not just talking about important issues where our cognitive biases can lead to us writing materials that aren’t inclusive. ELT as a whole is, I think, on one big learning curve as far that that goes, with some organisations leading the way and others lagging far behind. But we make other assumptions too. Here are three things that ?know I’ve wrongly made assumptions about in my work:

I’ve made assumptions about …

1 … what my students might be interested in, and especially in thinking that they might be interested in something that I feel passionate about.

2 … how much (or little) support or scaffolding students might need to do a particular task. Especially something complicated like a project.

3 … things that other teachers will automatically know (when I’m writing teacher notes, for example). One concrete example of this is thinking everyone knows the game ‘Hangman’. They don’t.

What mistaken assumptions have you made in a work context?

Wellbeing for freelancers (and everybody else)

I’ve decided to keep this as a regular sub-heading as it forces me to think of well-being if it hasn’t already surfaced in my week. And because I think it’s of interest to most of us. This week in the Guardian newspaper I saw a request for readers to write in and share the things we do in 5-minutes to make us feel instantly healthier or happier. It’s obviously going to form an upcoming article with a title along the lines of ‘Fifty things you can do in 5 minutes that will make you feel instantly healthier or happier’. I’m a sucker for those kinds of articles because even when a lot of the content is common sense, I usually get inspired to do something. So, as a first, I responded. I thought of a few tips to share and in the end opted for this one about something that makes me feel happier. I sometimes read one or two line surreal jokes by people like Steve Wright. They make me laugh out loud. Even the ones I’ve heard before. Here’s a link to a page of his jokes if you haven’t heard of him. The one in this week’s image is one of my favourites. If you fancy sending in an idea to the newspaper, here's the link.

Do you have a tip for a 5-minute activity that can make you feel instantly better?

Writing

A good week in writing for me. I’ve written:

… this newsletter

… ideas for readings and listenings for the next level of digital activities

… a blog post about the things we write for teachers that aren’t ‘teacher notes’

… notes for a webinar that John and I are doing on 2nd November for IATEFL

We were asked to repeat our IATEFL 2024 talk from Brighton and agreed. But then we saw we have an hour instead of the original 30 minutes, so we had to add stuff in. You can find out more about the event here.

… a new draft of a rhyming story I wrote some time back for a self-publishing idea I have in mind. I’d let it rest for about six months and I came across the manuscript as I was de-cluttering some folders so I decided to get it out again. It feels like now might be the right time to try and get it published.

… an email to a publisher of children’s stories asking for information about how they work.

Thank you

As always a big thank you for reading, writing, commenting, subscribing, and interacting.