Editorial
The text first appeared in IATEFL Hungary Newsletter.
Words: Orchestral or Solo Instruments?
Andrew Wright, Hungary
Andrew Wright lives in Godollo, Hungary, near Budapest. Andrew and his wife Julia run a private language school in Godollo and Budapest doing mainly company teaching. Julia is the director of the company. Andrew spends most of his time writing books and travelling in order to work with teachers. Andrew’s books include: ‘Games for Language Learning’. CUP, ‘Creating Stories with Children’. OUP, ‘1000 Pictures for Teachers to Copy’. Longman Pearson, ‘Writing Stories’. Helbling Languages. E-mail: andrew@ili.hu
www.andrewarticlesandstories.wordpress.com
www.teachertraining.hu
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Introduction
Personal development
Team teaching
Project work
Orchestra awareness
Activities
Summary
Note
In how many different ways can you say, ‘Thank you’? Can you say, ‘thank you’ and clearly not mean it?
How often do we hear, ‘It’s not what she said but the way she said it that upset me!’
We all know that body communication as well as the tone of one’s voice is a vital part of effective communication.
Words only exist if we hear them or see them and hearing or seeing involves many non verbal languages, for example, to see words they must be written. The typeface chosen for the letter M of McDonalds is quite different to the typeface chosen for the R of Rolls Royce. Typefaces convey meanings.
Page design conveys meaning: aligning the right hand side of columns of text suggests discipline and order...leaving the right hand side ‘ragged’ suggests informality.
Illustrations offer meanings. The illustrations may support the text almost like a picture dictionary or may offer extra meanings or even meanings which contrast with the meanings offered in the text.
Architecture offers meanings. My school was based on the features of Roman architecture implying Roman civilisation.
Interior design offers meanings. Most classrooms still have desks arranged in parallel lines with all the students facing the teacher and equally spaced which implies listening, remembering and regurgitating as the basis of the educational method being employed with students as soldiers waiting to be drilled.
Words are part of an orchestration of communicative instruments. Words cannot exist as solo instruments and yet that is the way they are taught. Language teaching and testing largely focus on a single instrument ‘verbal language’ when the reality is that this single instrument is always played in chamber music or full orchestration.
Today, many students in materially developed countries have direct access to computers which offer many non verbal languages: a hundred typefaces, different page layouts, the addition of illustrations. Skype offers voice and video reproduction. Family cameras offer sound and video reproduction of the highest quality. This revolution in communication has not been responded to, by and large, in the world of language teaching. This is not surprising for at least two reasons. First of all language teachers are not prepared for the teaching of all the instruments of the communicative orchestra and secondly it is too much to expect even if they were.
OK. So do we make no attempt to help to prepare our students for the reality of the orchestration of communication? Surely, that cannot be right if we consider ‘the teacher as educator’, the theme of this publication.
Here are a few practical suggestions:
Many language teachers consider learning a number of languages to be a key part of their own development and an additional richness on which to base their teaching of one language. Given the major role of non verbal communication it seems reasonable to suggest that language teachers look for every opportunity to develop their awareness, appreciation, knowledge and skill related to the key communicative instruments of body and voice communication and visual design and presentation skills. Something is better than nothing even if it is largely restricted to awareness and appreciation.
If you are working in a school for students in primary or secondary education there will be other members of staff who do have some training in these other communicative instruments. The most obvious would be: teachers of art and design, drama and music. Team teaching or cross curricular project work would bring in at least some of the expertise needed as well as providing extra lesson time. And, hopefully, more fun and sharing!
Engaging project work is the equivalent of ‘real’ football matches. You cannot expect footballers to train but never to play in a real match. Real matches motivate as well as allow the participants to experience everything they have learned holistically. Surely it is the same with language learners? Of course footballers need time to dribble the ball between sticks and time to analyse matches and no doubt language learners need the equivalent time to focus their minds on aspects of communicative skills. But some real matches and some real and engaging projects, please!
I have been working on project weeks for nearly twenty years. The students research, brainstorm, draft, try out their ideas on others, re-draft, design, produce and publish or perform AND not for the teacher but for the world outside the classroom.
Thanks to the internet there are many ways of sharing project work in the wider world offering a very real sharing.
Here are some suggestions for activities you can do in the classroom in order to develop awareness and appreciation of the nature of some other instruments in the communicative orchestra. Knowledge and skills would need a little more time than awareness and appreciation. You decide which language proficiency level and conceptual level of student could do each of these.
Activity 1: Typefaces
Ask the students to work in groups and to make a collection and a display of different typefaces in use in publications, advertising, comics, printouts from the internet, etc. They should then speculate about why each typeface was chosen according to what effect it was meant to have and on what kind of reader.
In design there are, broadly, three considerations:
- Practicality: What is available? What are the basic physical needs involved, for example, being able to see the text easily.
- The writer and/or designer expressing his or her feelings about the content of the text. Compare the M of McDonalds with the R of Rolls Royce.
- The writer and/or designer expressing his or her identity, social allegiance. Compare a Heavy Metal T shirt with a birthday card for a child
The students can make a display and annotate their comments as well as give an oral presentation.
Activity 2: Text and picture
- For a homework, ask the students to bring to the next lesson at least ten examples of the use of text and pictures in print i.e. printed on paper. Examples abound and might include: a page from a comic; a TV day schedule; a newspaper article; an advertisement, a page from a children’s book.
- Depending on the sophistication level of the students you might give or elicit the idea that there are basically three relationships possible between text and pictures:
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The picture offers the same content as the text.
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The picture offers complimentary content which combined with the text adds richly and positively to the meanings offered.
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The picture offers conflicting content which adds a tension of meanings.
- Ask the students to work in pairs and later in fours, categorising their examples into the three groups and preparing their commentary on the reasons for their categorisation.
- Groups work together explaining their display.
- Make a class exhibition.
Activity 3: Voice
How many ways can you say, ‘I love you.’ What does each way mean if it is spoken like that? Who might be saying it and to whom and in what sort of context? Ask groups to work out some examples and then to demonstrate them to the whole class.
Activity 4: Body
List, with the students about ten words for feelings and character, for example, excited, nervous, relaxed, confident, superior, worried, impatient, ‘couldn’t care less’, etc.
Ask the students to work in pairs. A chooses one of the words and acts it out. B guesses which word A chose.
Activity 5: Body, voice, text conflict
1 Ask the students, in groups, to work out a short scene in which one or two people say something which is contradicted by their voice and by their body position and action.
Example:
Teenager: Mom, can I stay out late tonight, please?
Mother: No, you can’t.
Activity 6: Subcultural appropriacy: clothes, body display, words
Even small children have a sense of appropriacy of behaviour according to occasion. For older students, dressing for and conversing in a pub are clearly different for dressing and conversing at a job interview or a court trial. And within this broad range of occasions there may be many variations. For example it would be unusual to wear a smart suit if you were going for an interview for a labouring job. I remember a friend telling me that, at one time in her life, she wanted a job as a domestic help. She couldn’t get a job as long as she spoke in her normal educated manner.
- Ask the students to work in pairs and to discuss two very different kinds of situation in which their dress, body behaviour and language are significantly different. Ask them to prepare some dialogues they could demonstrate to other pairs.
- Pairs. Students demonstrate examples of dialogues they might have in different situations and describe the clothes they might wear and the things they might do.
- Class. A few pairs demonstrate and the class discuss the form (content, voice, dress, action) related to the notion of appropriacy and occasion.
No one can doubt, in this media dominated age, that non verbal languages are enormously powerful and that words cannot exist except through these media as well as being accompanied by them. To ignore the orchestration of communication and to doggedly teach verbal language only as a solo instrument is unhelpful to the learner who, hopefully, will spend more time in contemporary society than in the language classroom
It is not enough to say that the students experience the full range of orchestration in class, modelled by you and by the materials being used. Of course this is important but development requires involvement and caring. Receiving modelled orchestration and working only on words is not enough: some activities must focus on this orchestration non-verbal and verbal languages.
Furthermore, it is not enough to say that the orchestration of communication is ‘something they pick up when speaking in their mother tongue’. This is manifestly wrong when students speak expressively in their mother tongue and monotonously in the new language.
The current situation in world society is so radically changed that a radical new look at the education we should offer our young people is necessary. It wont happen. But at least we can take some practical steps in the direction of helping students to experience verbal language as part of effective and expressive communication.
Lets share what those steps and activities might be; there is no one expert to guide us.
I went to art school and studied painting and drawing. For years I lived as a writer and illustrator. For twenty years I have earned part of my living as a professional storyteller. For fifteen years I was principal lecturer in art and design at what is now called, ‘The Metropolitan University of Manchester’. And, of course, I have been working in the world of language teaching all my working life.
None of these rich experiences make me into an expert but they have made me value living and playing in an orchestra.
Further reading and reference
Relevant web site of Sandie Mourao and some of her relevant articles
Sandie’s website is here because she is one of the few people in the world of language teaching who has focused on the notion of orchestration in the relationship between written text and illustrations in children’s picture books. Sandie writes as both a researcher and a classroom teacher and is able to share her findings in a simple as well as a comprehensive way.
The link for 'Resources and links' is useful, where a number of articles and chapters can be downloaded or accessed through http://sandiemourao.eu/pages
The link for 'Resources and links' is useful, where a number of articles and chapters can be downloaded or accessed through http://sandiemourao.eu/pages/resources
Useful articles are
Mourão, S. 2010 'What’s in a picture book?' in Mourão, S. (Ed) APPInep: Celebrating ten years of teaching children in Portugal APPI: Lisboa
Mourão, S. 2009 'Picture books- objects of discovery', in APPI Journal 2009:2 Autumn APPI: Lisbon
Mourão, S. 2009 ‘Surprised!’ Telling the pictures. Can the illustrations in picture books promote language acquisition? In Cruz, M. & Medeiros, P. (Coords) Revista Saber & Educar. nº 14 Ensino de Línguas no 1º Ciclo do Ensino Básico e Pré-escolar Lisbon: Escola Superior de Educação de Paula Frassinetti ISSN 1647-2144 http://www.esepf.pt/rev/?p=a_pt/sed14.html
Mourão, S. 2009 'Using stories in the primary classroom' In Denham, L. & Figueras, N. (Eds) BritLit: Using Literature in EFL Classrooms APAC: Barcelona pg 17 – 26 ISBN 978-086355-630-2
Picture books in ELT Blog - http://picturebooksinelt.blogspot.com/
A blog which alerts ELT teachers / trainers to the picture in picture books.
Relevant web sites supplied by Mercedes Viola for a discussion of the topic on IATEFL YL SIG in 2010
http://iearn.org/
iEARN (International Education and Resource Network) is a non-profit organization made up of over 30,000 schools and youth organizations in more than 130 countries. iEARN empowers teachers and young people to work together online using the Internet and other new communications technologies. Over 2,000,000 students each day are engaged in collaborative project work worldwide.
www.atlasdeladiversidad.net
ATLAS OF DIVERSITY is an innovative educational tool. It is made of a net of schools that thanks to mutual cooperation has created one of the most important and thorough databases about cultural diversity in the world. It is a site that aims at collecting the characteristics proper of each place starting from the criteria and the subjective vision of the participants.
www.elanguages.org
eLanguages is a global online community of teachers sharing ideas and working > > together with their students on curriculum-relevant projects. You can create your own school profile, meet teachers from around the world and share a variety of resources to make your projects lively and interactive.
Andrew Wright’s related to this topic
Storytelling with Children (new edition) Oxford University Press
Creating stories with Children Oxford University Press
Art and crafts Oxford University Press
Writing Stories (co-author David A. Hill) Helbling Languages
Games for language learning (co-authors David Batteridge, Michael Buckby) Cambridge University Press
Pictures for Language Learning Cambridge University Press
Five Minute Activities (co-author Penny Ur) Cambridge University Press
1000+ Pictures for Teachers to Copy. Longman Pearson.
Please check the Creative Methodology for the Classroom course at Pilgrims website.
Please check the Teaching English Through Multiple Intelligences course at Pilgrims website.
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