Equanimity, or evenness of mind, is a quality that is valuable in all zones of life. In the English teaching profession, it is invaluable. Though I can hardly claim to have harnessed my rampant mind to achieve complete and constant equanimity, time and experience have certainly helped. (Unless, of course, it is simply what seems like the rapid onset of old age that tends to accompany the end of semester?)
Today marked the middle of the fourteenth week of our sixteen-week semester. It also marked the mass exodus of students from campus, eight teaching days before the exams begin. Of course, the choice is theirs to make ? they are young adults, after all. Stunned as I was to find that nobody in my weakest class had shown up for today?s class, I willed myself not to feel disappointed or hurt. Their actions are not a reflection on their progress, my teaching or my value as a human being.
Or are they?
What could a young adult possibly want to do more than spend two hours in my scintillating company exploring the language in which they will study for a degree next year, the ways they can learn it enjoyably beyond the classroom walls, and most of all revelling in the progress they have made in this near-miraculous three months we have spent together?
Well? they obviously prefer what life beyond the classroom has to offer. Truth be told, most students do. The question is, what can we do to make the classroom an equally tempting contender for their attention. In short, what?s life got that I aint got?
The people have spoken, and they have spoken with their feet. Although this doesn?t justify self-flagellation, it certainly is cause for concern. If formal education is to be meaningful, educators have a responsibility to make our classrooms a destination tantalizing enough to compete with the best life has to offer.
And that is worth our sincere and astute enquiry.
Monday, April 27, 2009
Thursday, April 23, 2009
"It's All Make Believe, isn't It?": Online Play in Language Learning
The personal experience of an online role play activity was eye-opening to me not only as a student and educator, but also as the rather anaemic individual that ekes out an existence behind these roles that have permeated, infiltrated and completely run amok in my life of late. I will, therefore, begin this reflection with the insights of my malnourished individual self, before exploring my views “in character” as a student, teacher and educational administrator. Just this once, indulge me.
Personal insights
A profound personal insight was that every human being is far more than the roles that we are assigned by the necessities of daily life. Our behaviour is often dictated by time and circumstance rather than our own choices. Stepping out of our true identity (or day-to-day mask) and into another is both liberating and empathizing.
Another revelation was that participants in a role play may benefit from the traits of the characters they play. In my own case I was assigned the identity of the ultimate blonde bombshell, Marilyn Monroe – my diametrical opposite. My behaviour as a professional is always spearheaded by reason, logic and frankness. Feminine wiles are simply not in my artillery out of principle. Marilyn Monroe, on the other hand, built her entire career around her womanly appearance and charisma, ingénue behaviour and disarming charm. While I am hardly on the verge of exchanging my rhetoric for eyelash-batting, some re-evaluation may be in order.
Finally, I was reminded that deepened understanding of people often reveals unexpected depth. Monroe is often typecast as the quintessential dumb blonde. Yet my research on her revealed her capacity for profound thought and emotion. In fact, at least 90% of my contributions to the chat were direct quotes of her. The effect was poignant and showed a very different side of the legend.
In short, on a personal level the chat session was both thought-provoking and invigorating.
Student insights
As a student, I very simply enjoyed this chat session, and its preparation, far more than any other within and possibly beyond this course. The value of enjoyment in learning is self-evident.
As a student who is often self-conscious about the imbalance of contributions in the chat seminars, usually with myself dominating, I found the session a great relief. The participation was far more balanced than in any other session I have attended, with all students getting involved. A cursory word count of previous chat sessions showed that there was also far more activity on the whole. The MS Word word count in this session’s transcript was 6 396, as opposed to 3 621 in Unit 2, 3 421 in Unit 4, and 4 672 in Unit 6 transcripts.
One problem is that the activity’s effectiveness suffers if participants come unprepared. The solution in itself, however, points out the strength of CMC for social construction of meaning: other participants helped characters by providing more information on their history.
Educator insights
As an educator, actually participating in an activity of this nature allowed me to uncover potential benefits and drawbacks of online language play, particularly role play, in general and among my current students.
General benefits include those cited by Warner (below): increased motivation, increased participation, increased language input and output and potential for social construction of meaning, decreased contextual information and liberating power of anonymity. I would add to this that the nature of the activity can guide learners towards practice of particular target language. In this case, for instance, all but one of the characters was no longer alive, necessitating the use of the past tenses. The necessity to find out more about other characters, and later also their true identities, makes the use of question and answer forms an absolute requirement.
Benefits in my teaching environment would centre around the particular cultural constraints. Social taboos on communication between the genders severely cripple face-to-face classroom interaction. The mere use of pseudonyms could have a dramatic impact on the quality and quantity of interaction in mixed-gender classes if CMC became a reality in our under-resourced classes. A further benefit of anonymity would be its potential liberating effect on students who are self-conscious, or are more comfortable with computer use than English use.
General drawbacks can include learners’ avoidance of correct or more challenging language forms. This would include learners giving overly brief answers rather than fuller sentences, as well as copying and pasting information when not feeling confident to formulate their own expressions. In the longer term, instructors would be wise to provide ongoing feedback on frequent language errors, since the converse of learners’ increased use of the language is the danger of entrenching a fossilized interlanguage. Finally, systems should be in place to support learners to move from increased confidence in their language use on the screen to increased confidence in the real world. It is important to consider the character or pseudonym as a tool, not a crutch for life.
In my own context, the drawbacks may once again be related to the cultural taboos, which have an inhibiting effect on the possibility of many kinds of language play. Among the small samples of language play that have come up in the reading and in the activity, there were numerous examples (crude language, sexual banter etc.) that would be unacceptable to students and would compromise the teacher legally. Detrimental instances of flaming, due to student frustration in a mandatory course, are a further potential hazard. Since so many social norms are not always overtly expressed, and the price for transgressing them is so high, serious thought would have to be given to the ways in which online language play can be fostered in this environment when infrastructural development finally makes it possible.
Conclusion
Personally engaging in an online role play can provide valuable insights on a personal, academic and professional level. Such an activity can have a multitude of potential benefits. Optimal implementation will demand careful construction of the activity, taking into consideration ways to exploit the potential benefits of CMC and control the potential drawbacks within a particular teaching context.
Personal insights
A profound personal insight was that every human being is far more than the roles that we are assigned by the necessities of daily life. Our behaviour is often dictated by time and circumstance rather than our own choices. Stepping out of our true identity (or day-to-day mask) and into another is both liberating and empathizing.
Another revelation was that participants in a role play may benefit from the traits of the characters they play. In my own case I was assigned the identity of the ultimate blonde bombshell, Marilyn Monroe – my diametrical opposite. My behaviour as a professional is always spearheaded by reason, logic and frankness. Feminine wiles are simply not in my artillery out of principle. Marilyn Monroe, on the other hand, built her entire career around her womanly appearance and charisma, ingénue behaviour and disarming charm. While I am hardly on the verge of exchanging my rhetoric for eyelash-batting, some re-evaluation may be in order.
Finally, I was reminded that deepened understanding of people often reveals unexpected depth. Monroe is often typecast as the quintessential dumb blonde. Yet my research on her revealed her capacity for profound thought and emotion. In fact, at least 90% of my contributions to the chat were direct quotes of her. The effect was poignant and showed a very different side of the legend.
In short, on a personal level the chat session was both thought-provoking and invigorating.
Student insights
As a student, I very simply enjoyed this chat session, and its preparation, far more than any other within and possibly beyond this course. The value of enjoyment in learning is self-evident.
As a student who is often self-conscious about the imbalance of contributions in the chat seminars, usually with myself dominating, I found the session a great relief. The participation was far more balanced than in any other session I have attended, with all students getting involved. A cursory word count of previous chat sessions showed that there was also far more activity on the whole. The MS Word word count in this session’s transcript was 6 396, as opposed to 3 621 in Unit 2, 3 421 in Unit 4, and 4 672 in Unit 6 transcripts.
One problem is that the activity’s effectiveness suffers if participants come unprepared. The solution in itself, however, points out the strength of CMC for social construction of meaning: other participants helped characters by providing more information on their history.
Educator insights
As an educator, actually participating in an activity of this nature allowed me to uncover potential benefits and drawbacks of online language play, particularly role play, in general and among my current students.
General benefits include those cited by Warner (below): increased motivation, increased participation, increased language input and output and potential for social construction of meaning, decreased contextual information and liberating power of anonymity. I would add to this that the nature of the activity can guide learners towards practice of particular target language. In this case, for instance, all but one of the characters was no longer alive, necessitating the use of the past tenses. The necessity to find out more about other characters, and later also their true identities, makes the use of question and answer forms an absolute requirement.
Benefits in my teaching environment would centre around the particular cultural constraints. Social taboos on communication between the genders severely cripple face-to-face classroom interaction. The mere use of pseudonyms could have a dramatic impact on the quality and quantity of interaction in mixed-gender classes if CMC became a reality in our under-resourced classes. A further benefit of anonymity would be its potential liberating effect on students who are self-conscious, or are more comfortable with computer use than English use.
General drawbacks can include learners’ avoidance of correct or more challenging language forms. This would include learners giving overly brief answers rather than fuller sentences, as well as copying and pasting information when not feeling confident to formulate their own expressions. In the longer term, instructors would be wise to provide ongoing feedback on frequent language errors, since the converse of learners’ increased use of the language is the danger of entrenching a fossilized interlanguage. Finally, systems should be in place to support learners to move from increased confidence in their language use on the screen to increased confidence in the real world. It is important to consider the character or pseudonym as a tool, not a crutch for life.
In my own context, the drawbacks may once again be related to the cultural taboos, which have an inhibiting effect on the possibility of many kinds of language play. Among the small samples of language play that have come up in the reading and in the activity, there were numerous examples (crude language, sexual banter etc.) that would be unacceptable to students and would compromise the teacher legally. Detrimental instances of flaming, due to student frustration in a mandatory course, are a further potential hazard. Since so many social norms are not always overtly expressed, and the price for transgressing them is so high, serious thought would have to be given to the ways in which online language play can be fostered in this environment when infrastructural development finally makes it possible.
Conclusion
Personally engaging in an online role play can provide valuable insights on a personal, academic and professional level. Such an activity can have a multitude of potential benefits. Optimal implementation will demand careful construction of the activity, taking into consideration ways to exploit the potential benefits of CMC and control the potential drawbacks within a particular teaching context.
Monday, April 13, 2009
LAST LAP
That last lap around the field is the one where we truly see what we are made of. It is the time when every athlete has gone beyond the limits of strength and is running on the fumes of willpower alone.
That last lap is not unlike the end of semester.
For me, this is the last lap in many things. Not only are my students’ courses drawing to an end, I am also preparing to move to a different employer and a different country, in addition to completing the last modules of my MA before taking on the dissertation. It seems that each of these things demands the full cognitive capacity of one human being (or perhaps more!), and giving each its due is the greatest challenge I have faced in my adult life.
Perhaps blogging about this is a cunning procrastination strategy. Yet articulating the demands on are an important part of preparing to meet them. Stepping back to see what must be done is, sometimes, more important than to “just do it”.
Which is what I will now proceed to do.
That last lap is not unlike the end of semester.
For me, this is the last lap in many things. Not only are my students’ courses drawing to an end, I am also preparing to move to a different employer and a different country, in addition to completing the last modules of my MA before taking on the dissertation. It seems that each of these things demands the full cognitive capacity of one human being (or perhaps more!), and giving each its due is the greatest challenge I have faced in my adult life.
Perhaps blogging about this is a cunning procrastination strategy. Yet articulating the demands on are an important part of preparing to meet them. Stepping back to see what must be done is, sometimes, more important than to “just do it”.
Which is what I will now proceed to do.
Friday, April 10, 2009
THE MEASURE OF SUCCESS IN LANGUAGE LEARNING
As the end of this semester rapidly draws near, I am delighted at the strides my students have taken. Yet I wonder how their triumphs will show up on the ruthless radar of assessment.
When I first met these students, they needed an interpreter to find out when and where their first classes would be. A month ago they rather actively participated in videoed interviews where they had to introduce themselves and talk about pictures they were shown. They show up for every lesson, doing their part, asking questions when they need guidance. They grasp every opportunity to apply expressions they have learnt, spontaneously and in context. I have never been as grateful for a sneeze in class as when the formerly most reluctant student piped up “Bless you!” without missing a beat.
My brave soldiers have come a long way in the eleven short weeks that we have worked together. All of them passed the midterm exam safely. And yet it is not certain that the final, external examination will do them justice. After all their efforts – and, yes, my own as well – the achievement is clear to see. But will it show up in the finals? I have to hope and pray that it does. It is extremely important that they see evidence that hard work and passion pay dividends. While it already has, my goal for the coming weeks is to ensure that both my students and the powers that be see what they have accomplished.
Failure is not an option. Mostly because they have succeeded. We just need to prove it.
When I first met these students, they needed an interpreter to find out when and where their first classes would be. A month ago they rather actively participated in videoed interviews where they had to introduce themselves and talk about pictures they were shown. They show up for every lesson, doing their part, asking questions when they need guidance. They grasp every opportunity to apply expressions they have learnt, spontaneously and in context. I have never been as grateful for a sneeze in class as when the formerly most reluctant student piped up “Bless you!” without missing a beat.
My brave soldiers have come a long way in the eleven short weeks that we have worked together. All of them passed the midterm exam safely. And yet it is not certain that the final, external examination will do them justice. After all their efforts – and, yes, my own as well – the achievement is clear to see. But will it show up in the finals? I have to hope and pray that it does. It is extremely important that they see evidence that hard work and passion pay dividends. While it already has, my goal for the coming weeks is to ensure that both my students and the powers that be see what they have accomplished.
Failure is not an option. Mostly because they have succeeded. We just need to prove it.
Friday, April 3, 2009
OMANTEL BLOCKS ACADEMIC RESEARCH WEBSITE GOOGLE SCHOLAR
The importance of education in Oman's development is a matter of which the nation is aware at all levels. As an educator and researcher who has been based here for several years, I am acutely aware of the value access to quality information has for Omani students. Due to the dearth of academic books and libraries in the country, the tertiary education sector is largely dependent on the Internet in this respect. While search engines such as Google offer general information, academic research is enabled far more effectively by the research-specific Google Scholar website (http://scholar.google.com/schp).
To my great shock I have discovered that this website - perhaps one of the most vital to research development in this emerging nation - has been blocked by Omantel for the past week (http://www.omantel.net.om/new5.html?category=Pornography). Although I have emailed the company for a reversal of the decision, there has been no response as yet, and five calls to the company's internet helpline have delivered no satisfactory explanation.
The implications of disabling one of the most powerful research tools available - and one of the few available in Oman - send shivers down the spine of any academic community this nation may aspire to. While the World Wide Web teems with morally dubious potential, this is not usually the concern of dessicated academics such as ourselves.
Information, of course, is a dangerous thing. However, we have to weigh that up against the greater danger of the lack of information. Yet the greatest peril of all is the lack of wisdom to select and use information wisely. That is the peril that actions such as these - justifiably - inspire.
To my great shock I have discovered that this website - perhaps one of the most vital to research development in this emerging nation - has been blocked by Omantel for the past week (http://www.omantel.net.om/new5.html?category=Pornography). Although I have emailed the company for a reversal of the decision, there has been no response as yet, and five calls to the company's internet helpline have delivered no satisfactory explanation.
The implications of disabling one of the most powerful research tools available - and one of the few available in Oman - send shivers down the spine of any academic community this nation may aspire to. While the World Wide Web teems with morally dubious potential, this is not usually the concern of dessicated academics such as ourselves.
Information, of course, is a dangerous thing. However, we have to weigh that up against the greater danger of the lack of information. Yet the greatest peril of all is the lack of wisdom to select and use information wisely. That is the peril that actions such as these - justifiably - inspire.
Wednesday, April 1, 2009
GIFTED, TALENTED AND HIGHLY PROBLEMATIC
When teachers speak of the squeaky wheel getting the grease, it usually refers to the conventional problem student: the one having learning difficulties. We easily fall into the trap of thinking that gifted and talented learners are achievers, the superstars that buoy our classes along and serve as an example to others. Yet sometimes gifted and talented learners do not carry their gifts with grace. As educators, our responsibilities here move beyond teaching them information to equipping them with the skills to benefit from standard education and contribute socially at the elevated level a gifted person is capable of.
My dilemma this week is a bright young woman with a strong personality, a will of her own, an unusually powerful command of English and a serious attitude problem. Stuck in our Foundation Programme – which is intended to teach students English and study skills – she is intensely frustrated by work that is too easy for her (although classmates battle) and a course of study she did not choose. Her response has, sadly, not been particularly intelligent or at all considerate: disrupting classes, flouting regulations and most recently disrupting an exam session to the point where two of my highly trusted colleagues saw no option but to take her paper and remove her from the room.
At this stage, there are sufficient grounds for her expulsion, even from this lenient nationalized free education system. But if we expel here, have we done our part for this young woman who oozes potential (and, I have to admit, attitude)? Have we done our part for the country?
Although placed in the business programme, she insists that she wants a career in acting. In this society, that would be unacceptable. However, we may be able to coax her into transferring to the Communications programme, in order to start a career in broadcasting. Interestingly, this will put pressure on her English ability, which is great for a student but not quite ready for TV. However, she will have to sign an agreement to cooperate and participate for the rest of the semester. She will also have to do a demanding project – scripting and presenting a documentary – in the place of the exam she missed. And maybe, just maybe, a potential tragedy will be the making of one of Oman’s first female television superstars.
Because teaching English is not really my job. It’s just an alibi.
My dilemma this week is a bright young woman with a strong personality, a will of her own, an unusually powerful command of English and a serious attitude problem. Stuck in our Foundation Programme – which is intended to teach students English and study skills – she is intensely frustrated by work that is too easy for her (although classmates battle) and a course of study she did not choose. Her response has, sadly, not been particularly intelligent or at all considerate: disrupting classes, flouting regulations and most recently disrupting an exam session to the point where two of my highly trusted colleagues saw no option but to take her paper and remove her from the room.
At this stage, there are sufficient grounds for her expulsion, even from this lenient nationalized free education system. But if we expel here, have we done our part for this young woman who oozes potential (and, I have to admit, attitude)? Have we done our part for the country?
Although placed in the business programme, she insists that she wants a career in acting. In this society, that would be unacceptable. However, we may be able to coax her into transferring to the Communications programme, in order to start a career in broadcasting. Interestingly, this will put pressure on her English ability, which is great for a student but not quite ready for TV. However, she will have to sign an agreement to cooperate and participate for the rest of the semester. She will also have to do a demanding project – scripting and presenting a documentary – in the place of the exam she missed. And maybe, just maybe, a potential tragedy will be the making of one of Oman’s first female television superstars.
Because teaching English is not really my job. It’s just an alibi.
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