Editorial
Late Michael Berman used some of the materials during his workshop at the ITEFL Conference in 2013.

Last Contributions – Part 2

Michael Berman, UK

Michael Berman's published work includes The Power of Metaphor for Crown House, The Nature of Shamanism and the Shamanic Story for Cambridge Scholars Publishing, Shamanic Journeys through the Caucasus and Shamanic Journeys, Shamanic Stories for O-Books, Journeys outside Time for Pendraig Publishing, and Tales of Power for Lear Books. A Bridge to the Other Side: Death in the Folk Tradition and Georgia through Earth, Fire, Air and Water are both due to be published by Moon Books in 2012. ELT publications include A Multiple Intelligences Road to an ELT Classroom, In a Faraway Land (a resource book for teachers on storytelling), On Business and for Pleasure (a self-study workbook), and English Language Teaching Matters, written with Mojca Belak and Wayne Rimmer. For more information please visit www.Thestoryteller.org.uk

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Personalising your teaching
The Annual School Swimming Championship
Eliane and the Cat
Going back again
The Return from Glastonbury
False Friends
Name that Place
On the beach in Whitstable
Why personalise your teaching?

Personalising your teaching

Personalisation happens when activities allow students to use language to express their own ideas, feelings, preferences and opinions. Personalisation is an important part of the communicative approach, since it involves true communication, as learners communicate real information about themselves.

However, what about teachers communicating real information about themselves? One of the ways of achieving this is through storytelling, which is what the material that will be presented in this article is designed to illustrate.

The Annual School Swimming Championship

Not a long or troublesome journey this time - Kilburn to Finchley road - just two stops by tube on the Jubilee Line, but far enough to cause me enough embarrassment so that it pains me even now to recall, fifty years on.

The school swimming championships and I was due to represent my House in the 100 metres under 12’s breaststroke final. None of my classmates had ever seen me swim before and I had built myself as a superstar in their eyes with my talk.

Now my mother kept both my swimming trunks and my sister’s in separate towels in the airing cupboard. In my haste that morning I picked up the wrong one but did not discover my mistake until I reached the changing room. My worst nightmare come true. What could I do? And what would you have done I wonder.

Well my teacher offered to lend me his pair. With one hand I tried to hold them up and with the other to swim the breaststroke. Everyone was laughing at me and I trailed in last, letting my whole House down.(The boys in the single sex secondary were all divided into six Houses, probably in imitation of what went on in Public Schools like Eton at that time)

What did I learn from the experience at least? Never to boast about my prowess as a sportsperson again, not that I had or have any in any case.

Work in pairs. Select three questions from the list below to ask your partner, and make a note of the answers:

1. What is the most embarrassing experience you have ever had?
2. How fit are you-extremely, moderately or not at all?
3. If your answer to the above question was “not at all”, then what do you intend to do about it or what are you doing about it?
4. How do you feel about joining a health club?
5. Have you ever come first or last in a competition? Tell me about it if your answer is “yes”.
6. What should be done about sportspeople who take performance enhancing drugs?
7. What should be done about sportspeople found to be taking recreational drugs?

Eliane and the Cat

After I returned to England from two years spent working in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, Eliane and I continued our relationship long-distance by e-mail. Actually, to be more accurate, Eliane would send me e-mails of one sentence asking me for all my news with attachments about animal rights or petitions to sign – a strange priority to adopt given all the problems her country faced at the time. As I was one having to do all the actual letter writing and had little enough free time as it was during that period, this became nothing more than a chore and so I lost interest in this one-sided correspondence. In the end it was reduced to us sending nothing more than birthday greetings to each other once a year.

However, towards the end, she wrote to me about a kitten she had rescued and always signed her letters to me with her name, and the name of this kitten – lots of love from Elaine and Mauzinho. Once or twice, yes, but this became a regular occurrence and I even received Christmas cards from the cat.

Yes, she had had a hard life, yes she had seen her brother jump out of the window of their apartment block and commit suicide, and yes she had ended up alone after various failed relationships, but this still did not justify the attitude she had towards people: You can trust animals, they never leave you and they never let you down, unlike people, she would say. What she failed to realize, however, was that she was a person too, and I doubt if she would have labelled herself as being unreliable, so why judge others by different standards?

It was not just relationships with people she could no longer handle; she was also unable to work outside home because she would say it caused her too much stress. On the other hand her constant shortage of money, as a result, no doubt caused her even more stress than taking on a full-time job would have done. It seemed she was withdrawing more and more from the outside world, and any money she did have was spent on her “therapist”, someone who clearly believed the answer lay in prescribing ever-increasing doses of tranquilliser, disempowering rather than empowering her, and making sure she would be permanently unable to stand on her own two feet and take control of her life once again.

I have to admit I feel somewhat guilty I gave up on her, realizing now how lost she must have been, especially after learning from a mutual acquaintance that the kitten, which had grown into an old, blind and ailing cat, whose suffering was unnecessarily prolonged by costly booster injections, had passed away, but the truth is I just could not take any more. Completely stuck, and unable to face any short-term pain that being weaned off drugs might have caused her in return for long term gain, it was clear there was nothing at all I could do to help Eliane break out of the prison she had created for herself.

But perhaps creating prisons for ourselves rather than facing up to our fears is something we all do with our lives, to a greater or lesser extent, and I have no more right to pass judgement on Eliane than she does to do the same on me.

Find a partner to work with. Ask them some of the following questions, the choice is yours, and then report back to the class with your findings:

1. Who do you know who is fanatical about a certain issue, testing cosmetics on animals for example?
2. What do you prefer - dogs or cats? Give reasons for the choice you make.
3. How prepared are you to trust people?
4. What would you have tried to do to help Eliane?
5. Do you know anyone who has overcome an addiction? What sort of addiction was it, and how did they manage to succeed?
6. What sort of prison, if any, have you created for yourself?
7. Do prisons serve any useful purpose and, if so, what do you think this is?
8. Do we have any right to judge others – what do you think?

Going back again

I know many people who like to return to the same place year after year on holiday, but I am certainly not one of them. I also know people who enjoy going back to their old schools for annual reunions or places where they used to work to keep in touch with old colleagues, but this does not appeal to me either. What I tend to find is that I have moved on and so have they, so we have no common interests any more. So after talking about old times, the conversation dries up and we are left with nothing but awkward silences to fill or searching for excuses to cut the meeting short somehow.

When I have returned, it has always proved to be a disappointment, either because the place is not as I remembered it to have been, or it has changed for the worse. I also find it dangerous to recommend such places to other people and to take them back with me, for I have found they hardly ever share my feelings and this leaves me feeling stupid.

For me, once something is over it is over, no going back. I’d rather let go and move on to somewhere new. After all, life is short and full of places to see, so why limit yourself? We only get once chance and we should make the most of it. In the words of St. Augustine, “The world is a book and those who do not travel read only a page.” I hope I never fall into that trap.

I know it is common to fear the unknown though and this is why returning again feels safer sometimes, but look at what you are missing out on. And do you really want to be left with regrets about lost opportunities at the end of it all? Not me. The fact of the matter is that if we are growing, we are always going to be outside our comfort zone, in any case. As Mark Twain pointed out, “Twenty years from now you will be more disappointed by the things that you didn't do than by the ones you did do. So throw off the bowlines. Sail away from the safe harbour. Catch the trade winds in your sails. Explore. Dream. Discover.”

Of course there are times when we have no choice but to return, to retake failed exams, to complete unfinished business, or in the case of readmissions to the same hospital with a recurring problem, but situations such as these are generally not of our own making. Generally speaking though, we do have the power to take control of our lives, and we should make the most of this.

I wonder what sort of person you are and whether you share my feelings or not.

Now pick three questions from the list below that interest you to ask the person you are sitting next to, and then report back what you find out to the rest of the class:

1. The only source of knowledge is experience. ~ Albert Einstein. Does knowledge come from going back and revisiting old places or by embarking on new adventures, or from both – what do you think?
2. Man cannot discover new oceans unless he has the courage to lose sight of the shore. ~ Andre Gide. How open are you to stepping into the unknown?
3. I'm pretty horrible at relationships and haven't been in many long-term ones. Leaving and moving on - returning to a familiar sense of self-reliance and autonomy - is what I know; that feeling is as comfortable and comforting as it might be for a different kind of person to stay. ~ Carrie Brownstein. Tell me about a time when you found it difficult to move on, and how you managed to do so in the end?
4. Travel and change of place impart new vigour to the mind. ~ Seneca. What would you say you have learnt most from – revisiting old places or travelling to new ones?
5. Nothing is a waste of time if you use the experience wisely. ~ Auguste Rodin. What have you learnt from revisiting places?
6. I can't think of anything that excites a greater sense of childlike wonder than to be in a country where you are ignorant of almost everything. ~ Bill Bryson. How good are you at adapting to such unfamiliar situations?
7. To awaken alone in a strange town is one of the pleasantest sensations in the world. ~ Freya Stark. Where would you prefer to wake up –somewhere you have been to many times before or somewhere completely new to you?
8. A good traveller is one who does not know where he is going to, and a perfect traveller does not know where he came from. ~ Lin Yutang. Can you cut your ties with your past in this way?
9. A man of ordinary talent will always be ordinary, whether he travels or not; but a man of superior talent (which I cannot deny myself to be without being impious) will go to pieces if he remains forever in the same place. ~ Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart. What sort of person are you?
10. Experience comprises illusions lost, rather than wisdom gained. ~ Joseph Roux. By returning to places you have been to before, or by trying to make a relationship work for a second time what illusions have you lost?
11. There is a peculiar pleasure in riding out into the unknown. A pleasure which no second journey on the same trail ever affords. ~ Edith Durham. How do you feel about returning year after year to the same place on holiday, and how keen would you be on buying a time-share apartment to use for this purpose?

Here are some more quotations about going back to places. See if you can find the missing words in each case:

1 _____can only be understood backwards; but it must be lived 2 _____. ~ Soren Kierkegaard

A mind that is 3 _____ by a new experience can never 4 _____ back to its old dimensions. ~ Oliver Wendell Holmes, Jr.

I think we all 5 _____ we could erase some dark times in our lives. But all of life's experiences, bad and good, 6 _____ you who you are.7 _____ any of life's experiences would be a great mistake. ~ Luis Miguel

Everything has been said 8 _____, but since nobody listens we have to 9 _____ going back and beginning all 10 _____ again. ~ Andre Gide

No one 11 _____ how beautiful it is to travel 12 _____ he comes home and 13 _____ his head on his old, familiar pillow. ~ Lin Yutang

There is 14 _____ like returning to a place that remains unchanged to find the 15 _____ in which 16 _____yourself have altered. ~ Nelson Mandela (South African Statesman First democratically elected State President of South Africa (1994), 1993 Nobel Prize for Peace)

All the pathos and irony of 17 _____ one’s youth behind is thus implicit in every joyous 18 _____of travel: one knows that the first joy can never be recovered, and the wise traveler19 _____ not to repeat successes but 20 _____ new places all the time. ~ Paul Fussell

ANSWERS: 1 Life can only be understood backwards; but it must be lived 2 forwards. ~ Soren Kierkegaard

A mind that is 3 stretched by a new experience can never 4 go back to its old dimensions. ~ Oliver Wendell Holmes, Jr.

I think we all 5 wish we could erase some dark times in our lives. But all of life's experiences, bad and good, 6 make you who you are. 7 Erasing any of life's experiences would be a great mistake. ~ Luis Miguel

Everything has been said 8 before, but since nobody listens we have to 9keep going back and beginning all 10 over again. ~ Andre Gide

No one 11 realizes / appreciates how beautiful it is to travel 12 until he comes home and 13 rests / lays his head on his old, familiar pillow. ~ Lin Yutang

There is 14 nothing like returning to a place that remains unchanged to find the 15 ways in which 16 you yourself have altered. ~ Nelson Mandela (South African Statesman First democratically elected State President of South Africa (1994), 1993 Nobel Prize for Peace, b.1918)

All the pathos and irony of 17 leaving one’s youth behind is thus implicit in every joyous 18 moment of travel: one knows that the first joy can never be recovered, and the wise traveler19 learns not to repeat successes but 20 tries new places all the time. ~ Paul Fussell

The Return from Glastonbury

What do you know about the town of Glastonbury in South West England? You can find out more by listening to the following story about something that happened to me there:

I am often asked why, even though I have a driving licence and would benefit from having a car due to the difficulty I now have in walking or using public transport, I do not have one. Though not strictly true, I usually answer to reduce my carbon footprint, but, the real reason for my decision not to drive is somewhat different.

Glastonbury is a small town in Somerset, England, situated at a dry point on the low lying Somerset Levels, 37 km south of Bristol.

Evidence from timber track ways such as the Sweet Track show that the town has been inhabited since Neolithic times. Glastonbury Lake Village was an Iron Age village west of Glastonbury, and dates back to the Bronze Age. Centwine was the first Saxon patron of Glastonbury Abbey. Formerly one of the most important abbeys in England, it was the site of Edmund Ironside's coronation as King of England in 1016.

These days Glastonbury is known as a New Age centre, and is notable for myths and legends often related to Glastonbury Tor, concerning Joseph of Arimathea, the Holy Grail and King Arthur. In some Arthurian literature Glastonbury is identified with the legendary island of Avalon. Joseph is said to have arrived in Glastonbury and stuck his staff into the ground, when it flowered miraculously into the Glastonbury Thorn. The Glastonbury Festival, held in the nearby village of Pilton, takes its name from the town.

It was therefore the ideal location for a weekend workshop on using a Native American version of the tarot which had been designed by the facilitator of the course, and which I chose to register for at a time in my life when I was particularly interested in such matters.

At the end of the first day, when the workshop leader had gone through the significance of each of the cards in turn, she invited us to see her on an individual basis to give us our sacred names.

Mine consisted of a weather condition and the name of a rarely seen bird of prey. I was about to leave so the next participant in line could take my place but for some reason she held me back. “You will decide to leave the course early” she then told me, “and on your way home you will experience something you will never forget.” In fact, I had already decided to leave early. I did not appreciate the communal living accommodation provided for the workshop, felt somewhat out of place, and there were pressing concerns back in London that I wanted to deal with instead.

I gave her warning little attention until I set off on the motorway back to London. All of a sudden the car ground to a halt, the weather condition changed into the first part of my name described and there, lying in front of the car, was the rarely seen bird of prey that formed the second part. Then, when I opened the car to check what was wrong with the engine, the weather changed back to what it had been like before and the creature had vanished without a trace. It was as if the whole incident had never happened, but on the other hand it was all so powerful I was in no doubt that it had. The experience affected me so deeply that from that day on I never drove again and never will.

We have all had experiences that have significantly changed our lives in one way or another. Tell the person sitting next to you about one such experience you have had.

Whoever heard a particularly interesting example can share this with the rest of the class.

False Friends

In each of these quotations, the missing word is the same:

“A ***** friend and a shadow attend only while the sun shines” Benjamin Franklin (American Statesman, Scientist, Philosopher, Printer, Writer and Inventor. 1706-1790)

“***** friends are like our shadow, keeping close to us while we walk in the sunshine but leaving us when we cross into the shade.” Christian Nevell Bovee (American author and lawyer).

“***** friends are worse than bitter enemies." (a Scottish proverb)

“True friends are like diamonds, precious and rare. ***** friends are like leaves, found everywhere.” (unknown)

The missing word is of course FALSE, and false friends are those who only stick around during the prosperous and beneficial moments of your life. As soon as disaster strikes or you have a problem and need their help for something they disappear or act like they never were your friend.

But the term “false friends” can also refer to something else:

False friends (French: faux amis) are pairs of words or phrases in two languages or dialects that look or sound similar, but differ significantly in meaning. An example is Portuguese raro "rare" vs. Spanish raro "strange" (similarly, Spanish exquisito "exquisite" vs. Portuguese esquisito "strange").

Often, there is a partial overlap in meanings, which creates additional complications: e.g. Spanish lima, meaning "lime" (the fruit) and "lime" (the calcium-based material), but also "file" (the tool). Only when lima is used to mean a file does it become a false friend to the English "lime".

The use of false friends can lead to misunderstandings and / or embarrassment, and this is what happened to me when I was living in a small village in Andulucia, in the South of Spain.

Whenever I move to a place for the first time, I always find it difficult to go to the toilet at first and this occasion was no exception. I tried the obvious such as eating plenty of fruit and drinking plenty of water, but as after three days I still had the problem, I decided a visit to the local chemist was the only solution.

Eager to practise my self-taught Spanish, I explained what the problem was to the assistant: “Estoyconstepado” is what I said. The assistant disappeared into the back of the shop from where he returned with a nose spray. The reason for this was that unbeknown to me “constepado” is a cold in Spanish.

For monolingual groups:
“You have two minutes (or “as long as the music lasts”) to make a list of as many false friends as you know and we will then see whose list is the longest.”

or

“Get together in small groups to produce a list of all the false friends you know, which you can then share with the rest of the class.”

For multilingual groups:
“Turn to the person sitting next to you and tell them about any false friends you are familiar with.”

Name that Place

What I would like to do is to tell you about my favourite seaside resort. What I particularly like about it is that it is full of locals rather than day-trippers or tourists, and people who work - who make their living from collecting oysters and then selling them in the local fish market.

It is not too far away from London where I live and you can find it in the county known as the Garden of England. Instead of casinos, cinema complexes and fast food outlets, you will find pubs where they have local beers and ciders on draught as well as wholesome meals made from fresh local produce. You will also find rows of traditional bathing huts by the beach, dating back to Victorian times.

Of course you cannot be sure you will have good weather there, as is the case in any place you visit in England, but when it is fine you can swim in the sea or simply sunbathe on the beach while watching the tide coming in and going out - something that I never tire of and that never fails to calm my frayed nerves.

As for accommodation, no fancy five star hotels but simple family-run guesthouses where they serve typical English breakfasts.

Perhaps you can identify the place I have been describing by now. It is of course Whitstable.

How about your favourite seaside resort? Describe it to the person sitting next to you without telling them the name to see if they can guess where it is or not. You can also ask them if they had an unlimited amount of free time and money, where would they choose to go and why?

On the beach in Whitstable

It was one of those wild wintery days when the wind cuts through you like a knife and all you really want is to be is standing by a radiator in the warmth and comfort of home.

We had taken our young dog down to the beach for the very first time, where he was both excited and frightened by the sea.

Meanwhile, on the other side of the groyne by which I was standing, watching Keti run with the dog, three people trooped down to the seashore, two middle-aged men and a woman, all looking sombre and in total silence. There they stood stock still gazing out to sea and the woman placed a cassette player on the pebbles. The distorted sound of the aria Nessun Dorma by Puccini sung by Pavarotti blasted out of it and they stood to attention throughout.

"Dilegua, o notte! Tramontate, stelle! Tramontate, stelle! All'albavincerò! Vincerò! Vincerò!" ("Vanish, o night! Set, stars! Set, stars! At dawn, I will win! I will win! I will win! ")

Then they trooped off again, the woman crying profusely but making no sound so it was not immediately apparent to me that she was until she walked silently by me..

Why they carried out the ritual I have no idea and all I can do is to speculate as to the reason. How were they related, if at all, what was the significance of the aria for them, why did they play it on the seashore and what was the reason for her tears?

A ritual can be defined as a set of actions, performed mainly for their symbolic value, and it may be prescribed by the traditions of a religious community. The term usually refers to actions which are stylized, excluding actions which are arbitrarily chosen by the performers.

A ritual may be performed on specific occasions, or at the discretion of individuals or communities. It may be performed by a single individual, by a group, or by the entire community; in arbitrary places, or in places especially reserved for it; either in public, in private, or before specific people.

The purposes of rituals are varied; with religious obligations or ideals, satisfaction of spiritual or emotional needs of the practitioners, strengthening of social bonds, social and moral education, demonstration of respect or submission, stating one's affiliation, obtaining social acceptance or approval for some event—or, sometimes, just for the pleasure of the ritual itself.

Then there are rituals we create for ourselves, which are not performed mechanically as they often are in churches, temples or synagogues, but which are invested with a personal element which can make them more powerful and meaningful.

Points for Discussion

1. What explanation can you find for the behaviour of the three people?
2. Which rituals were important to you when you were growing up and which rituals are of particular importance to you now?
3. Have you ever created a ritual or taken part in one to help you deal with a painful situation and, if so, how did it help you?

Why personalise your teaching?

• To establish a meaningful relationship with those you teach, you need to have the courage to share some of your own life experiences with them.
• By sharing information about yourself, you thereby encourage the learners to open up and do the same.
• By expressing their own ideas, feelings, preferences and opinions in response to your initiative, the learners are transferring what they have learnt to real life situations.
• This makes communication activities more meaningful, and also helps memorisation.
• The approach enables you as a teacher to be a lot more creative than you would be if you merely followed a course book.

Please check the Creative Methodology for the Classroom course at Pilgrims website.