How NLP has changed my teaching

Simon Marshall, Pilgrims, UK
Interviewed by Judy Baker, Canterbury, UK

In this interview Judy asked Simon how learning about NLP had affected his teaching and his teacher training. His answers cover important NLP areas like rapport, flexibility, awareness of thinking styles, respect for others' values, careful use of language, focus on what you want to have happen and learning from feedback.
Throughout the interview she had a strong sense of the respect in which Simon holds his students and his belief in them as autonomous and resourceful learners.

Simon said:

Planning

I use the different sensory channels during the lesson or across the week. The awareness of this has given my teaching more breadth. It makes me plan with more variety and possibly helps me change activities more. Activities are now varied more between big and small chunk. Now I'm more both, rather than being 'gobbit-like' as I was before.
In training teachers I can now talk to myself and the trainees about desired outcomes. I can ask, 'What do you really want to happen?' rather than having a token aim or something very linguistic, for example, 'To teach the present perfect with 'just'. Now it is more like ' I want the students to be able to do x through these activities.'

Classroom management

I vary the pace of my teaching more now. I believe I have an increased awareness of pace. This is something to do with flexibility. I have a tendency to go slowly, but now I can vary this when it suits what needs to be done.
I use the NLP spelling strategy. (to learn more about this go to Ruth Hamilton's article in HLT Jan 03)
I model activities, rather than just explaining them. I actually do the desired behaviour. So if you've got an information gap activity instead of saying " get into pairs, one of you is A and the other is B etc", I'll say 'Look. I'm A and you are B and I'll demonstrate the activity." This is especially useful at lower levels. It's clearer and you don't need a lot of language. They can watch as well as hear. It is also useful for people from cultures who are not used to doing communicative tasks. They can process what is expected of them while watching.

Materials

I have found the NLP notion of flexibility very useful in relation to materials. In classical TT courses, you take a piece of material, and you look at how it can be changed to suit the class. Now I think, how can it be deleted, distorted or generalised. ( Simon's reference here is to the "meta-model" )

NLP is useful in countering my natural literalism. Before, if there was an exercise to do I needed to do it all, otherwise I would think that it wasn't done. Now I believe that you don't have to be perfect or complete everything for it to be valuable for the students. These days, I am allowing myself to cut things down, to make things more manageable. I'm not completing a piece of paper for the sake of it. So I'm doing more, thoroughly.

The idea that the map is not the territory.

I remember now that each student is doing a different thing, even though the activity may appear to be the same. It's different for everyone. I'm teaching the student individually as well as teaching the whole class and the task. So I don't expect people to finish at the same time. I monitor each individual more now, even in a large class.
I am by nature fanatical about time. Before, if I had planned that something was going to last 20 minutes, I would be very keen that it did and I would go too fast or too slow to make it fit in with the planned time.
Now that I accept that different students will take different lengths of time to finish a task, I need more back-up activities. This means I have to be more flexible but I often find that I can ad lib activities. This of course, comes from experience, but it seems to always work.

I am an avid planner. I don't know how I ad-lib and I don't want to know!
I think I can do it because my mind is lively when I'm teaching. I love teaching. I like it as much as my students, sometimes more.

When I'm feeling shit, teaching makes me feel better.

Teaching is my life. It redeems bad times. When I am feeling down, teaching can bring me out.

Gurdieff says that no-one does evil consciously. ( also an NLP presuppostion). Each student is doing the best they can. People's behaviour is not always what you think it is. They are not necessarily there to piss you off. If you do think they are you tend to draw up battle lines.
I have become more flexible to different behaviours for example, cultural differences. For example, recently I was doing some workshops for a group of teachers. Ten had arrived by 9 o'clock, when the workshop was due to begin. They dribbled in, talking as they came into the room, using their phones. Eventually there were 30 people there by 10 o'clock. Normally this would have annoyed me very much, but I said to myself, 'They're doing this because this is what they do, not to annoy me.' I taught along with it. I kept going because I just thought this I how they are. And I am how I am - me with a strong sense of values around punctuality and politeness. I managed not to condemn them internally.
I thought that they were still in a baby-like state. They live with no awareness, but their behaviour is not wilful. It's a different map of life. I was comfortable with my own values, but it's also okay for them to be how they are.

Course Feedback

Mid course feedback. I did tend to be very general in my questions. " What did you think of the first week?" Now I ask much more specific questions like 'What parts of the first week were most memorable or relevant to you? Please give examples."
If things are not going well, in the past, I have allowed people to tell me what is wrong and I've allowed myself to feel bad about it. Getting more specific information helps me feel that I know what specifically to do about it.

Giving Instructions

I give positive instructions now. I say 'Do this', rather than saying 'Don't do that.' I say, I want you to do Exercise 1 only', rather than 'I want you to do exercise 1 and not exercise 2'

I try to ask questions which are positively framed. I'll ask, 'Would it help if I did x or y?" For example, in teaching pronunciation I might ask 'Would it help if I said it again? Or would it help if you repeated it?' I am trying to give options for my own behaviour as if things were going to go right. If I'm teaching a student who's stuck rather going back to my own taxonomy, the inventory or typical ways of overcoming a pronunciation problem, I ask what I can do to make it easier for them. If there is a difficulty making a distinction between chip and cheap I ask, 'What do you think would help?' and I act on that even if it is not on my current list of ways of teaching. I use 'optimistic' language.
I won't say, 'We're going to do something really difficult now'. I often notice teacher trainees telling students something is really tough, because that's how they think it is. It has a huge impact on their own frames of thinking about teaching. I try not to think that learning is hard because the students will then believe it. So I never impose a difficulty. Trainees have responded well to hearing about this. I ask them how they would like to hear 'You are going to be doing some really difficult grammar for the next hour and a half.'?
They always laugh.
Optimism includes specific praise, even small chunk stuff, rather than empty praise.
'That was well done because……….'
If a trainee says 'That was a disaster', I ask 'so what are you going to do differently next time?'
I avoid the 'you could have, you should have' because it is too retrospective. What is done is done. It can't be undone. Feedback should always be forward looking, about what can be done in the future.
I believe I keep good rapport with the students by being very specific. That's my aim, to be clear and specific. It gives me a good feeling.

Judy writes:

If you would like to read more about NLP, there are a number of good introductions. You could try Principles of NLP by Ian McDermott and Joseph O'Connor (Thorsons). If you want a book on NLP inspired activities for your language students try Unlocking Self-Expression Through NLP by Baker and Rinvolucri (Delta), 2005

Please check the NLP course at Pilgrims website.