Editor Ivan Fidrovsky

Cover designer Ivan Fidrovsky

© RF Duncan-Goodwillie, 2020

© Ivan Fidrovsky, cover design, 2020

ISBN 978-5-0051-1129-6

Created with Ridero smart publishing system

This book is dedicated to its subjects: The English Teachers. Thank you for making the lives of others better… and for making my life interesting

Glossary of Terms

The following is a non-exhaustive list of terms which appear in the book. Some of these subjects have entire books dedicated to them in detail, so what is presented will naturally be an oversimplification best corrected by a more in-depth online search.

1-2-1 teaching – describes a situation where there is one teacher and one student.

Accuracy – refers to a focus on using language correctly. Tasks which focus on accuracy will often involve a lot of correction by a teacher, etc. The opposite of this is fluency, where activities are designed with the idea of students getting their message across regardless of the accuracy. Fluency and accuracy operate on more of a spectrum than two distinct categories.

ADOS – an abbreviation of Assistant Director of Studies. These people are usually English teachers with some management and administrative responsibility, and supervise the work of a teacher. A Director of Studies (DOS) does this in smaller schools or oversees schools at a strategic level.

BKC – a large chain of language schools in Moscow and a franchise of International House. Blocks – are classes scheduled on the same day close together. For example: 1500—1600, 1615—1715, etc.

Cambridge Assessment English – a Cambridge Exam board.

Cambridge Proficiency English (CPE) – an exam that shows candidates have mastered English to an exceptional level.

Camp – many language schools also run summer camps during the break between academic years. These usually have less structured curricula, which encourages teachers to be creative and flexible.

Certificate in Advanced Methodology (CAM) – an International House training course for experienced teachers.

Certificate in English Language Teaching to Adults (CELTA) – a common initial teacher training qualification.

Chunks – refers to the way that groups of words are commonly found together, sometimes with no obvious reason. They are more common in native-level speech.

CLIL (Content and Language Integrated Learning) – teaching subjects such as Science, Maths and History to students through a foreign language.

Communicative approach – an approach to language teaching which involves students communicating real meaning to successfully learn (as opposed to completing mindless activities). Outside of this description, it is hard to define without courting controversy.

Continuous Professional Development (CPD) – is ongoing training and development while working.

Controlled practice – activities in a class where students focus on producing language accurately.

Cover classes – classes taught by a substitute teacher when the regular teacher for the class is ill or otherwise unavailable.

Concept checking – refers to measures to confirm students have understood what has been presented.

Deep-end CLT – a type of communicative language teaching where explicit grammar instruction is rejected and a programme of study, based around communicative tasks, is used instead.

Delayed feedback – given a relatively long time after a task has been completed or an error/mistake has been made. Immediate feedback is given just after an error/mistake has been made or during an activity.

Demand High – another approach to teaching that favours deeper learning over just covering material in books. More detailed examinations can be found online.

Dogme – a teaching approach that prioritises a focus on being light on materials and focusing on the language students produce in class during conversations. More information can be found relating to this online.

Emergent language – language that comes up – usually unexpectedly – during classroom interaction. It is language students use to express the meaning they need to in the moment.

English First (EF) – a large network of schools operating globally.

English as a Foreign Language (EFL) – taught to students where English is not the main language.

First Certificate in English (FCE) – a Cambridge qualification for B2/Upper Intermediate level English.

Fossilisation – a phenomenon which occurs when the mistakes students make become a fixed part of the way they speak English. Opinions differ over how much it is possible to correct fossilised errors.

Gamification – in education this process involves taking elements of games and applying them to educational tasks to promote engagement.

Grading language – refers to efforts made by teachers to make their speech more comprehensible to lower level students.

Grammar-translation – probably the method of teaching most people are familiar with. It involves a focus on grammatical rules and translation from one language to another.

Guided discovery – an approach to grammar teaching that involves students analysing examples of language and attempting to deduce the meaning, form and sometimes pronunciation from questions set by the teacher.

International English Language Testing System (IELTS) – an international standardised test of English.

International House World Organisation (IH) – a large network of English Language schools.

Instruction checking questions – questions asked to ensure students have understood tasks and activities.

Intelligibility – how well a speaker/writer can be understood.

The Lexical Approach – an approach to teaching that is based on the idea that a key part of learning a language depends on being able to understand and produce lexical phrases as chunks and these can and should be taught to students.

“Lifting off the page” – refers to the idea of not just teaching from the book. Some activities in books present opportunities for further, more engaging practice than if they were only worked through as they are laid out in the book.

Present, Practice, Produce (PPP) – a standard lesson framework for grammar lessons where a teacher presents language, students practise it (perhaps by doing gap filling activities) and then attempt to produce the language taught in a freer activity.

OGE/EGE – Russian state school exams.

Open lessons – lessons specifically set aside for parents and guardians to visit lessons and observe what happens in a class. This is usually a feature of YL classes.

Pacing schedules (pacings) – documents which map out what pages from certain textbooks should be covered per lesson. Some pacings are more flexible than others and teachers can be permitted to choose materials that best meet the needs of their students.

Postgraduate Certificate in Education (PGCE) – a common UK university-level teaching qualification.

Private classes – classes taught outside of a formal institution such as a school – even a large private one. Many teachers have private students in addition to their formal classes with the institutions they work for.

Satellite schools – refers to schools at locations outside city centres.

Task Based Learning (TBL) – a lesson framework which requires students to engage in tasks that resemble situations similar to those in real life. In weak-end TBL the teacher provides key language to be used in tasks, while in strong-end TBL, students are (at least initially) expected to select the language needed to complete the task.

TESOL – generally describes any non-CELTA certificate in teaching English to Speakers of Other Languages.

Trinity TESOL – an ELT qualification on a similar level to CELTA.

Test-teach-test (TTT) – a lesson framework whereby a teacher tests students, decides the areas that require improvement and teaches those specific points, and then tests again.

Test of English as a Foreign Language (TOEFL) – a standardised test to measure the English language ability of non-native speakers wishing to enrol in English-speaking universities.

Young Learners (YL) – generally students between 7—16 years old. Very Young Learners (VYL) generally refers to students less than 5—6 years old.

1
Origins and the Raison D’être

Why does anyone write a book?

Looking back, perhaps this should have been one of the questions I asked in my interviews since articulating my own answer to that question has proven difficult. I often find that discussing questions with other people helps form my own perspective, but since this really is only a question I can answer, I will muddle along with what I have.

The idea for this book did not come to me overnight in a single burst of creativity. It was a confluence of several events. One of these was my DELTA (Diploma in Teaching English to Speakers of Other Languages) Module 3 research, during which I noticed a wealth of books and blogs about how to teach and what to teach, but very little on the teachers themselves in terms of how they felt about their work. Perhaps the closest was Peter Medgyes’ “The Non-Native Speaking Teacher” which did a very good job of capturing the thoughts and feelings of many teachers throughout the world along the divide of native and non-native speakers.

I found Medgyes’ work to be quite influential in terms of appreciating the issues facing teachers regarding this most crucial of issues and how to raise awareness in teachers and students of how to approach it. Perhaps at present a two-tier system exists between native and non-native speaking teachers in some cases, but working towards an ideal where there doesn’t have to be such a divide is something we could all benefit from.

Similarly, Kathleen Graves also recorded the thoughts and feelings of teachers as they related to course design via direct quotes from teachers in question. In turn, I would like to quote Kathleen’s insightful observation that: “Dialogue among teachers is a crucial step in giving teachers more power in their professions: it helps teachers to be more aware of their own practice and how it relates to that of their colleagues.” As with Medgyes’ awareness raising, I drew a great deal of inspiration from this when forming my ideas about how to structure this book.

One of the unfortunate aspects of the work of these two writers, however, is that the wealth of sources in Medgyes’ case had a focus on the particular native/non-native cleavage, and Graves’ focus solely on course design limited the scope of the work for my purposes. I hope to address these issues by increasing the range of issues facing teachers and changing the focus to the teachers themselves respectively. The primary aim of this book is to help current and prospective English teachers by showing them what teaching is actually like for those already working in the profession.