Defragmenting Foreign Language Learning

Marisa Constantinides — Wed, 03 Apr 2013 00:08:13 +0000

Presenting language in small fragments hoping that they will one day automatically transform into fluent near-native talk may not be enough. My talk at TESOL Greece highlighted some ways in which skilled performers achieve excellence and focused on practical activities promoting holistic language learning using a variety of free online tools.

Photo by Mike Harrison

Fragments of knowledge

The standard practice of the Foreign Language classroom is to present language in fragments, smaller chunks, or grammar McNuggets. Scott Thornbury has invented the wonderful term Grammar MacNuggets, in the linked post on his A-Z blog.

Teachers do so in the hope that these partial views of language will one day be successfully synthesized to form a coherent whole in the learner’s mind, hopefully resulting in fluent output.

Research and experience have proved this inadequate.

Like a computer’s hard drive, all this fragmentation leads to slow processing. None of the applications we use on our PC’s really work well when the hard drive is fragmented.

In the same way, the ‘MacNuggeting’ of language knowledge bytes leads to fragmentation and lack of ability to access language and be able to use it in a natural and fluent way.

Holistic Activities as defragmenters

In this talk, I looked at the profiles of skilled performers, drawing analogies between what they do to achieve a polished and skillful performance and what this implies that foreign language learners ought to do in order to improve their productive skills – their performance skills, in other words, in the target language.

Suggestions for practical classroom activities focused on holistic language practices involving

Sustained talk / long turns
Connected writing
Engaging learners in higher order thinking processes
involving technology which promotes holistic learning rather than iterative practice
motivating learners to acquire language through collaborative and meaningful projects using a variety of Web 2.0 tools.

Skilled performers are both knowledgeable as well as skillful at what they do, so this talk aims to redress the balance in favour of increasing the frequency and focus of productive skills activities to promote more skilled/fluent and accurate language users.

Photo by Mike Harrison

Defragmenting foreign language learning 2013 from Marisa Constantinides

2012 in review

Marisa Constantinides — Thu, 14 Mar 2013 19:38:47 +0000

The WordPress.com stats helper monkeys prepared a 2012 annual report for this blog.

Here’s an excerpt:

4,329 films were submitted to the 2012 Cannes Film Festival. This blog had 33,000 views in 2012. If each view were a film, this blog would power 8 Film Festivals

Click here to see the complete report.

Our Nominations for the Edublogs Awards 2012 – #eddies 2012

Marisa Constantinides — Mon, 26 Nov 2012 20:35:50 +0000

Here are our nominations for the Edublogs Awards 2012.

Best individual blog	Tony Gurr’s Blog All Things Learning - because he worries about his posts and I like the way he thinks about teaching and learning
Best individual tweeter	Shellt Terrell @ShellTerrell because she always tweets great content and is a great educator besides
Best group blog	www.eltchat.org It’s a blog maintained by its moderators but the content is co-created through the conversations of dozens of twitter teachers which are then written up into summaries by a wonderful collection of ELT bloggers!!
Best edtech / resource sharing blog	Nik Peachey’s Quick Shout Blog because he makes edtech look so easy to use
Best twitter hashtag	#ELTchat because it connects hundreds of ELT teachers every week on Twitter and keeps contributing to their development in a free and autonomous way; because it has created a PLN which is supportive and shares knowledge in a connected world.
Best New Blog	Carol Goodey’s New Blog because it’s the blog of a reflective teacher
Best teacher blog	Box of Chocolates - Cecilia Lemos’ blog; because she reflects so well on her teaching and uses her blog to become an outstanding teacher.
Best free web tool	At the time of writing this post, I am finding great value in curation tools; my favourite this year is Pinterest.
Best open PD / unconference / webinar series	BESIG online webinars
Best educational use of a social network	The aPLaNet Project Ning because it provides a meeting point for teacher who mentor other teachers in the use of social networking tools for education.

Autonomy, Social Networking and Professional Development

Marisa Constantinides — Sat, 22 Sep 2012 21:25:24 +0000

Reblogged from aPLaNet - Autonomous 'Personal Learning Networks' for Language Teachers:

Marisa Constantinides is one of project partners of aPLaNet and she gave a concurrent keynote entitled “Autonomous Professional Development Begins at Home”. In this session, Marisa outlined ample opportunities that could be found on the internet for professional development of teachers and discussed various ways of getting involved in networks of community of practice.

How can social networks help with…

Online Teacher Development Works Best – 15 Reasons Why

Marisa Constantinides — Mon, 10 Sep 2012 18:34:27 +0000

This post was originally written for Nik Peachey’s Learning Technology Blog and it has been reproduced here with his kind permission.

I’ve started this article with quite a bold statement, but it’s a conclusion that I have been coming too over the course of quite a few years now. I should really put this into context though, as most of the teacher training I do deals with pedagogical training for the use of technology and is most often delivered during intensive face to face sessions, usually with groups of teachers working in a computer lab. Though, having said that, I do still believe that many of the reasons I have listed below do also apply to other kinds of more ‘mainstream’ teacher development too, especially intensive courses.

So, here are my 15 reasons why I think developing your teaching online can be more effective.

Learn while you teach - This gives you the opportunity to try things out with your own classes working in your own environment with your own students. Often when we take a face to face intensive course we leave our familiar teaching environment and come back with lots of new ideas only to find that in our everyday reality many of them don’t work or create unforeseen problems that we don’t know how to deal with. Studying while we teach can give us the time to try out new ideas in our own work place, discover the obstacles and try to adapt them to our own context.

Non competitive - Face to face courses can often become quite competitive and tend to favour people who are more confident and extrovert and who like to shine. This can often lead to the quieter more reflective types being overshadowed and not having the opportunity to contribute what may well be valuable comment or ask the questions for which they need answers. The text based and asynchronous nature of online training makes it much easier for everyone to have their say and can lead to a much richer and more collaborative learning experience.

Work at your own computer - This sounds like a very strange advantage, but training with technology on your own computer can be a huge advantage. Contrary to popular belief, computers do tend to be unique. The way one computer is set up and how it responds and the kinds of problems you encounter can be very different from one computer to another. Nothing is ore frustrating than going on a course with a computer that is set up to make things easy for you and then returning to your own computer and finding that there are a whole different set of problems that you don’t know how to solve. Training to use technology with your students needs to include training to trouble shoot the problems that you may have with your computer and learning how to overcome these and set your own computer up to run effectively in your own working environment.

Experiential learning - The best way to learn about technology and online learning is to experience it for yourself. Being part of an online course gives you first hand experience of being an online learner and helps you to understand some of the challenges and obstacles your students will face when they use technology to study online.

Develop digital literacies - Even if you aren’t doing an online course which is technology specific, you should still be able to pick up a few new techniques and develop some of your digital literacies by studying online. Again, a good online course will have some element of digital literacy and study skills development built in. This should go some way towards helping you understand how your students are learning in the real world and the kinds of study skills they need to develop.

Digital networking literacies - This really falls within digital literacies, but it is worth highlighting as I feel that developing your digital networking skills has real significance for your continuing development. If you can learn how to build supportive relationships with the other trainees on your course so that you can retain these contacts as a network after you finish the course then you can put these networking skills to good use within the various open online communities and networks that exist within various social media platforms such as Facebook and Twitter. Having an online learning network and knowing how best to work within that network can help to ensure that you can guide your own continuing development after the course you are training on has finished.

Build international contacts - Online training often provides a much more international learning environment than the classroom and so this can help to broaden the learning experience as there is a much wider range of experience to share. Finding out about how things are done in different countries and very different contexts to your own can be very refreshing and enlightening and can really enhance the learning experience and the network building potential of the course.

Differentiated learning - As a trainer when you encounter a group of teachers face to face, it takes time and effort to see them as individuals with individual needs and interests. As an online trainer this experience is reversed, you are constantly dealing and communicating with each member of the group as an individual and this enables you to more rapidly assess their needs as individuals and adapt the learning to suit them.

One to one time - Following on from the previous point, almost all tutor – student time in online courses is one to one rather than whole group, so again it is easier to ensure that as a trainee you get the attention you need from your tutor.

Personality types - For shyer less confident students online leaning can work to their advantage because contributing in text can be much less threatening than doing it orally. You also have more time to consider your contributions to the group and can edit and re-edit them to be sure that you express yourself clearly.

Longer period of study - Learning something well really takes time. Online training can often take place over a much longer period of time than most face to face courses can. This keeps you supported and engaged in the learning process for a greater period and so allows more time for development.

Your learning journey - Because the interactions within an online course are digital, they are recorded and captured so you have the opportunity to go back and retrace and review your entire learning journey. This greatly increases the chances of a deeper learning experience and greater retention of what you have learned.

Time for reflection - Online training allows more time for reflection and good online learning structures in this reflection, so that you not only reflect on your learning process but have time to discuss and share your reflections and share in the reflections of other teachers

Flexibility - You can study at times that are convenient for you and for time periods that suit your learning concentration span. A lot of classroom training time often turns into dead time, because the length of lessons are dictated by administrative convenience rather than pedagogical advantage and trainers and trainees are often left pushing their way through materials long after their optimum concentration period has been exceeded. When you study online you can have a break whenever and however often you feel like. This gives you time to ponder what you have learned or move on to new materials at your own pace and use your time more efficiently.

Lower cost - The costs, not only of courses but also of travel, accommodation and time off work are often vastly reduced when you take an online course rather than a face to face course.

So those are my 15 reasons. Feel free to add any of your own in the comments section.

From the end of September 2012 I will also be running my own teacher development courses – ICT for ELT, so if you want to put my theories to the test, you can enrol on one of my courses. You can find more information here: Facebook ICT for ELT

Link to course information page

Related links:

Best

Nik Peachey

About the Author

Nik Peachey is an international expert on ICT/learning technologies, DELTA approved teacher trainer and writer. In 2012 he was the winner of an ELTons Award in 2012 for Excellence in Course Innovation in designing a Blended course programme. Nik is also the author of the OneStopEnglish series on Tools for Teachers and of Web 2.0 tools for Teachers

#ELTchat: the loss of eltchat.com – Plan B

Marisa Constantinides — Fri, 10 Aug 2012 19:06:13 +0000

For the last - well, almost two years now, since September 15 2010, #ELTchat has kept us on our toes and forged hundreds of professional and personal relationships amongst its followers who turn up on Twitter every Wednesday to talk about topics they have suggested and voted on - a community of peers which was created by a small group of colleagues - which grew and grew some more and became something that counts as an important part of our continuous professional development.

Like many great ideas, it didn’t hit just one person but several.

And that is how #ELTchat was created.

The website to keep up the communication of its members, a base and repository of our ideas was one of the first things we all thought of creating – the wiki came later.

Andy Chaplin was keen to join the moderation team and help with podcasts and technical stuff; he was quick to buy eltchat.com and announced the good news to us after the fact.

A few months later, right after TESOL France 2011, he suddenly disappeared – some say for reasons of health.

We never found out for sure.

We never received a single word of response to our emails.

eltchat.com was and still is registered in his name.

And yesterday we lost it

On August 8 the domain expired and we have no way of taking over unless it goes up for sale again; it was very sad that Andy Chaplin did not find it appropriate to renew.

The news is really upsetting.

The work we have put in on this website cannot be told in a few simple words – but it has been a labour of love and we have got so much out of it that we have never regretted one single moment

We are pretty upset at the behaviour of this individual – disappointment is one big understatement.

But we trust that our community of #ELTchatters, our PLN for short, will again gather round the new domain which we have purchased – eltchat.org

It will take us a few days to put the website back on its feet

And all will be as it was before – all the posts in place all your thoughts and comments, all the polls and great summaries which got us on the shortlist of the ELTon Awards nominations

We will be back with a vengeance

We are not just a website – we did not get on the ELTon awards shortlist as just another website!!!

We are a great community of teachers and we have a Plan B!

See you all in September!!!

Marisa Constantinides – Shaun Wilden

P.S. We would greatly appreciate it if any of you belonging to this great community of teachers, teacher educators, bloggers, #ELTchat followers, reposted this on your blog

If you decide to do this, please add your name to the post under ours.

Why do I Blog?

Marisa Constantinides — Sat, 30 Jun 2012 10:25:52 +0000

I am a teacher educator from Athens, Greece. I train English language teachers and help them become better teachers in the classroom.

I started blogging in late 2009 my first blog, Marisa Constantinides – TEFL Matters (in English), was followed by this blog which was originally intended to include topic areas more focused on the Greek teaching and learning context. But very soon, the comments left by my blog visitors and the conversations that developed out of them showed me that all teachers everywhere share similar problems and face similar difficulties. So, instead of narrowing down the scope of topics, I decided to turn this into a group blog where my colleagues and trainees can also contribute and take their first steps in being a blog author.

Since then, I have started and maintain various blogs, one in Greek too!

This is a re-post from my Webheads Blog which I never tire of sharing – hoping to spread my enthusiasm for blogging with you and to make you start blogging too!

So, Why do I blog?

Richard St. John shares his eight secrets of success in a fantastic video and I want to talk about blogging and how I think it is connected to these eight great secrets.

Here are the eight secrets in a word cloud

Richard St.John’s Eight Secrets of Success – Made with http://www.wordle.net/

I blog for all these reasons:

I blog because I want to be an excellent educator (Excellence)
I blog because I want to share my ideas (Serve Others)
I persist even when I am tired; good results need hard work! (Work!)
I blog to focus more on my interest and learn more about it (Focus)
I blog because this makes me think and learn new things (Push Yourself)
I get more ideas by trying to explain my ideas to other people. (Ideas)
I blog because I love my job and I am passionate about teaching (Passion)
I persist because I believe communicating your ideas is important for learning (Persist)

What should you blog about?

Blog about something you love, something you are passionate about. It may be using songs in the classroom, using Web 2.0 tools or it may even be a blog about the English language!

If you love your subject, you will find more things to write and you will also find the time, no matter how busy you are.

It takes time but it’s worth it!

May be you will find it hard at the the beginning. I found it hard too!

But with time, it gets easier. Remember! You won’t get better by waiting! You will get better by trying!”

Go beyond your comfort zone

Challenge yourself and you will surely be amazed by how much you will learn by communicating with the world!

And if you would like to listen to this great talk which inspired this post, here is Richard St John’s talk, one of the great TED talks.

Subscribe to this Blog

If you liked this post, you might like to subscribe to our blog by leaving your email address or following our RSS feed

My Learning English journey

Alexandra Koukoumialou — Sat, 19 May 2012 21:03:11 +0000

For the May #ELTchat challenge, I am handing over our blog to one of my Business English students, Adrian, who has managed to develop a host of helpful learning strategies to use outside the classroom, independently of his teacher. Adrian has travelled a long distance from studying in a fairly traditional learning environment to turning an autonomous learner, responsible for his own learning and free to (re)negotiate the syllabus with his tutor. Here is what he had to say, in his own words, and without any editing from me:

My Background

Three years ago, I started private business English lessons in order to improve my language skills.

I am a middle-aged professional and I need advanced English on my work so learning English is a need for me, not a pleasure.

My aim isn’t to get a language diploma but to reach a level that allows me to use the English language correctly and to speak fluently. I mean, I focus on the practical and not the theoretical part.

As you realize, I am not a typical student. I work many hours per day so I don’t have a lot of free time for studying, my memory is weaker than most younger students’ memory, so I don’t absorb the knowledge easily. On the other hand, as a professional, I use formal vocabulary when I speak in my mother tongue and my critical thinking is on a high level. Sometimes, these things make me analyse things too much and prevent me from going ahead quickly.

First of all, I had to convince myself to do just that: to start English lessons.

Finally, if I wanted to improve my English language skills, I should manage my time properly. That’s why I did English part of my daily routine.Second, I did some research online and I found the school that seemed right to me. The point was that it was experienced in teaching adult students.

I do the following things in conjunction with my lessons.

Online Reading:

I started to read the world news through online newspapers – like the FT, The New York Times, USA Today etc.

For more ideas, check out this site: www.onlinenewspapers.com

I also read the Greek news through the English version of our local newspapers, like Kathimerini. It is really useful procedure because, first, I improve my vocabulary and, second, I feel more confident when I need less and less my dictionary.

More Listening:

I started to watch movies without subtitles. It was a disaster because I understood the minimum of the plot and I was disappointed. Then I realized knowledge acquisition needs time so I have to go on step by step. I started to watch videos again but this time I chose short videos from YouTube and English, baby! .

I had two main benefits: first, I wasn’t bored or tired of the video and, second, the short duration helps me to manage it easily. I watched every video many times until I understood most of the dialogues – not only the general meaning.

Apart from these, these days I watch English TV news channels online like BBC one , On-air , France24. Now, I am able to listen to lectures or TV programs without many difficulties and I feel proud of myself.

And … Speaking:

It is the most difficult part for me. I am a very strict and demanding person and I usually have high expectations of myself. That is the main obstacle which I have to overtake, because I avoid speaking except when I am completely sure about the correctness of my speech.

So, I started to record my voice and short speeches through SoundCloud . Then I started to prepare presentations using Prezi, which I recorded and listened later .

This technique helps me to find out my mistakes and to fix them but I still avoid taking risks because I hate to make mistakes. (I know this is silly but I cannot stop it!)

Finally, I’d like to say that learning English is a long process which needs patience and persistence. So:

Set your personal targets and try to reach them step by step.
Put English in your daily routine.
Don’t be afraid of making mistakes (don’t be like me!)

About the Author

Alexandra Koukoumialou

Alexandra Koukoumialou has been a teacher of young learners and adults for more than 15 years. She obtained her Cambridge Diploma for Overseas Teachers in 1993 and ran her own private language school for 10 years. She now teaches general and Business English and Modern Greek courses at CELT Athens and, as her blog post suggests, occasional CLIL courses! Alexandra also recently completed her Avalon Certification Course for Teaching Languages in Second Life. Alexandra is also one of the online tutors supporting our Distance Diploma in Translation Courses from and into Greek.

She is @AlexandraKouk on Twitter

#ELTchat at the ELTons Awards

Marisa Constantinides — Fri, 18 May 2012 23:57:24 +0000

ELTons Awards Nomination News

May 23, 2012

Innovation in Teacher Resources

We are very proud, pleased and honoured to be shortlisted in the nominations for an ELTons award, “the only international awards that recognise and celebrate innovation in the field of English language teaching (ELT).”

For a whole week my blogs will be celebrating the ELTons award nomination and shortlisting of the #ELTchat website and #ELTchat, a weekly online discussion on Twitter followed by hundreds of educators around the globe.in the Innovation in Teacher Resources category.

This weekly conversation has very quickly evolved and developed into a great sharing community with a wiki and a blog which we maintain to share knowledge, ideas and links in a series of

blog posts summarising the main chats
podcasts and videos containing interviews with colleagues, teachers and well-known authors on the topics of the weekly discussions.

The nomination is not for a product, but for content co-created through our conversations and the volunteer work of us, the moderators, and #ELTchat participants, who share their knowledge generously and freely, and by those of them who undertake to write up the summaries of these conversations, making them coherent, easier to read and accessible to all.

It is those summaries, collected and presented together, that make all the difference and which have evolved into a formidable resource for teachers. Some absolutely marvellous posts have been written up for the benefit of all who follow #ELTchat – and even for those who don’t follow but have discovered this treasure trove of ELT resources.

On May 23, 2012, during the awards ceremony in London, UK, which will be held at BMA House - the building of the British Medical Association, the winners will be announced and the shortlist includes some well known ELT professionals. We may or may not win, but we all feel very happy to have brought the first co-created content to this event!

Please click here to view this year’s nominees and categories.

At 6.30 BST, you will be able to watch the ceremony which will be livestreamed with Scott Thornbury presenting the awards and Luke Meddings co-hosting and doing the interviews.

We will, of course, tweet it and put it up on our Facebook group!

We hope some of you will be able to follow this great annual event for English Language Teaching and perhaps be inspired to join Twitter and follow this great online community of educators who offer their time voluntarily for Continuous Professional Development. If you would like to find out more about the topic, please follow the links below.

UPCOMING EVENT

May 23, 18:30 BST

The ELTons Awards

Click here for the special ELTons pages for posts, updates and livestream!

at BMA House

How to Follow #ELTchat on Twitter

Watch this video if you would like how to follow #ELTchat o Twitter

#ELTchat
Moderators

Shaun Wilden
Shelly Sanchez Terrell
Barbara Hoskins Sakamoto
Bernadette Wall
Marisa Constantinides

Learn More about how to become a Twitter Teacher

Click on this link
to work at your own
pace and learn how to
use Twitter

ELTchat Blog

Hi there, and welcome to the #ELTchat website. This is the central resource for all things relating to the #ELTchat discussion sessions on Twitter. Here you’ll find the chance to vote on topics for discussion, check out the archives of previous chat sessions, and read articles by guest bloggers on important themes in the ELT world.

The #ELTchat sessions will be on Wednesdays at 12:00 pm London time, at 21:00 pm London time and will last for one hour.

Read on here

99,000 tweets and counting!

What is #ELTchat?

Every Wednesday at 12:00 p.m. GMT and 21:00 p.m. GMT, a great number of ELT teachers from all over the world log into their Twitter account and for one hour they hold an online discussion (chat) on a topic they have selected.

The conversations can be followed by following the #ELTchat hashtag (please read the last section if not sure what a hashtag is); so anyone who posts a comment, a link, a question, must put #ELTchat somewhere in their message (status update or tweet). This way everyone who follows this hashtag can see their tweets.

#ELTchats Summary Index

Here is a list of all of the eltchats which have ever taken place, including links to the transcripts and summaries where available. Please let us know if you would like to write a summary for chats which don’t already have one.

Read the summaries list here

Facebook as a Learning Management System

Marisa Constantinides — Fri, 11 May 2012 22:37:52 +0000

I was very happy to discover a research report on the potential of using Facebook as a learning management system.

Facebook popularity and the ease with which most teachers and learners can create an account these days was, after all, one of the reasons our aPLaNet project team decided to include Facebook as one of the three Social Networks which may help teacher with their professional development easily and with complete autonomy.

Teachers Using Facebook for Continuous Professional Development

Here is a screenshot of a Facebook group created to continue Twitter conversations of #ELTchat, a Twitter discussion which takes place every Wednesday – you can read more about #ELTchat here and here and should you decide to join this group on Facebook, you will find it here!

#ELTchat – a group which is a learning community of ELT teachers

There are numerous groups of teachers connecting on Facebook, beginning with major teacher associations such as IATEFL and TESOL International and moving to smaller, teacher created communities of practice with a general or a with a very focused aim, e.g. teaching Business English.

Teachers Using Facebook as a Learning Management System

In the article which is listed and linked below this post, the researchers look at the benefits of and shortcomings of using Facebook as such a system.

I can give show you a couple of examples – screenshots of groups related to trainees of mine on Facebook.

Open group for DELTA canditates around the world.

This group started out as a learning management system, but with many of its members having completed their courses, it soon became open to anyone following a DELTA course anywhere in the world. Its members share links, top tips for revision, and ask questions which range from the sublime “Could you please respond to my research questionnaire?” to the practical, e.g. “What time is the written exam tomorrow? I’ve forgotten!”

These days, it is functioning more as a Professional development tool for DELTA candidates.

Facebook as a Learning Management System

In this use, the teacher creates a closed or even secret group (not found in Facebook searches) and uses it to

communicate socially after school hours
post announcements
upload or link to homework assignment
share ideas and useful links for further study
publishing exemplary work or
publishing work that all are invited to comment on

Screenshot of closed Facebook group created by my DELTA trainees in the summer of 2010 and used expressly for internal communications.

Google docs links (for example of part of a draft assignment, as you can see above) are used to compensate for the lack of ability to share documents, powerpoints or pdf documents – this is mentioned in the research article, too.

My post was just a short introduction.

The article I have been talking about was posted in the British Journal of Educational Technology – please see details below.

Marisa Constantinides

CELT Athens

It’s freely available for reading on the web and I recommend it very highly!!!!