Wood or Trees? Finding a Way through the TEFL Jungle

Jill Hadfield, New Zealand

Jill Hadfield has been involved in EFL either as a teacher or teacher trainer for over 20 years and is the author of over 20 books for teachers, some written with her husband Charles. She has taught and trained teachers in Britain, France, China, Tibet, and Madagascar, and held workshops and courses for teachers around the world. She is currently senior lecturer in the School of English and Applied Linguistics at Unitec, Auckland, NZ. She is the author of Resource Books for Teachers: Classroom Dynamics, and co-author of Presenting New Language, Simple Listening Activities, Simple Speaking Activities, Simple Reading Activities, and Simple Writing Activities, all in the Oxford Basics series published by Oxford University Press. E-mail: jhadfield@unitec.ac.nz

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Introduction
Signposts: a sense of direction
Maps: the whole picture
Compass: finding the way
Staging posts : dividing the journey into manageable chunks
Carving their own path

Introduction

Think back to when you were a teacher trainee yourself. How did it feel in the first days or weeks of your course? The following trainee voices give us a taste of what it feels like:

…it is a lot to take in at once… I find myself swimming in a sea of notes

Dan Hinkley on tefl.net

…our heads {are} spinning from lots of new information

Jennifer Patience tefl.net

… {the course is}some kind of torture test to see you have what it takes. Just as you start getting your head around what the tutor is talking about, they switch topics and start on something else…
… yet another onslaught of new information…
…these tutors make a career out of miniscule details and how to catch their students out at forgetting them.

Debbie Sealey on tefl.net

Memories like these of our own initial training courses coupled with observation of what our trainees are going through as they embark on their initial TEFL qualifications were uppermost in our minds when we began to write Introduction to Teaching English. Taking the image of our trainees lost in the TEFL jungle, trying to find their way through an impenetrable forest of new ideas and information , we used this extended metaphor as a basis for course design. The book aims to help trainees find their way through the jungle by providing them with signposts, a map, a compass, staging posts and finally tools for carving their own path An important feature of the book is that it does not presuppose that the trainees have access to technology. Where techniques are described that require for example a photocopier or recording facilities, suggestions are given for alternative low-tech ways of doing the activity.

Signposts: a sense of direction

The book has a very simple structure. Student course books provide students with security and a sense of direction by having clear layout and the same structure from unit to unit. We have tried to transfer these ideas of the importance of clarity and pattern to Introduction to Teaching English. The book has 4 units:

• Introduction: Basic Principles : WHO and WHY
• Teaching Language : WHAT
• Teaching Skills
• Conclusion: Putting It Together : Classroom Management: HOW

and each of the core units is in the same format:

Each Focus on section is in the same format:

• About…
• How to help learners with…
• How to select…
• The structure of a… lesson
• Overview of sample lessons
• Two sample lessons

Our aims in standardizing format like this were to lessen the feeling of ‘swimming in a sea’ of information, to give security through structure, to give a sense of direction and to make information easy to retrieve.

Maps: the whole picture

A feature of the book is a whole-to-part structure, in contrast to the part-to-whole structure of most methodology books. Each Focus on… section contains two complete sample lessons, described in detailed stages with simple materials that the trainees can make. The lessons are chosen to contrast with each other in some way: for example, in the Focus of speaking section, one lesson is a discussion and the other a role play, in the writing section one lesson is genre-based, the other is process writing, one grammar lesson is taught inductively the other is taught deductively, one functions lesson follows PPP format, the other has a TBL format.

We hope in providing a range of complete lessons to give students a context and background into which individual techniques can fit to give trainees a ‘feeling’ for the rhythm, pace and staging of a complete lesson. In the words of one of our trainees:

“…. it was when I observed Tania teach a whole lesson , I suddenly saw how it could all come together.”

Rosa September 2007

Compass: finding the way

As well as a map, you need equipment to help guide you and orient yourself in relation to the map. Each sample lesson has comment boxes at various points, telling the trainees more about particular activities and explaining the reasons behind them. It is as if the trainee is observing a lesson, with an experienced teacher who is able at the same time to explain to him/her what is going on and why, e.g.:

Lead in

Show the class one flashcard.
Tell them it comes from an advert.
Can they guess what it advertises?
Collect suggestions.
Put up all four flashcards and get the learners to discuss in pairs what is advertised in each picture.
Use the pictures to pre-teach vocabulary which may be unfamiliar: wrinkles, scrubbing, energy.

Comment

This lead-in activity has three purposes:

1. It gets learners’ attention and helps to get them interested and curious about the topic.
2. Predicting the subject of the adverts will help them understand when you ‘perform’ the ads.
3. The pictures will help you pre-teach some difficult vocabulary (ITE p63).

Staging posts : dividing the journey into manageable chunks

The book can obviously be used as an initial training course for pre-service trainees but there are also other ways in which it could be used:

• As pre-reading to give context and overview before the course begins
• As introductory module for longer courses
• As complementary reading , providing a whole-to-part perspective to complement the part-to-whole approach of many courses and methodology books.

As pre-reading or as an introductory module, it would provide a self contained introduction, leading up to a ‘staging post”, a point at which trainees could pause, having gained an overview and a context into which methodology and theory introduced later in the course can fit .

The book also provides staging posts in another way. Trainees often have difficulty with staging their lessons. One problem may be that the familiar stages (PPP, ESA, ARC, etc) are fairly broad and trainees need more guidance on the components that make up each stage. This book also uses three broad stages: Input, Understanding, Practice, but these are broken down into smaller sub-stages:

Carving their own path

We have found that throwing trainees on their own resources, getting them to create materials and design lessons - with guidance - rather than follow a textbook not only gives them a better sense of where they are going and what they are doing, but also fosters creativity.

Other teachers have found this too:

…’working from a basic structure [the Oxford Basics books] is an important step in helping students to gain confidence to be critical and to use their own imaginations and intuitions in developing their teaching materials.’

Janet Higgins in The Language Teacher JALT 2: 95

The lessons in the book could be used in several ways. Trainees can:

• read them as a form of lesson observation
• watch experienced teachers teach the lessons
• use them for teaching practice
• use the lessons as templates to design similar lessons on different topics

We hope that this ‘guided jungle adventure ‘ is also an interior journey, where trainees will discover their own inner resources of enthusiasm, energy, creativity, and humour…
….and find a path through the jungle in their own distinctive way.

Please check the Methodology and Language for Secondary Teachers course at Pilgrims website.
Please check the From Teaching to Training course at Pilgrims website.