Hugh Dellar
And his 20 things in 20 years in 20 minutes
Very thought-provoking points.
(it is my script from the youtube conference clip here)
1. Falling into a me-shaped hole
So, are you still teaching? (the implication is that one yay you'll grow up and get a proper job) :)
Being ME is not a complete disadvantage. The positive advantage: freedom, space for creativity, opportunity to meet amazing people, the space which allows you to recreate the world in the classroom in the way you believe it ought to be.
We (teachers) have all fallen into our own me-shaped holes.
2. Trouble trouble before trouble troubles you. Bring your conflict resolution mechanism into the classroom.
3. Kicking the grammar habit
Grammar anxiety - a contagious disease - don't infect your students with it. Don't spend many fruitless hours for recognizing the difference between:
The phone was ringing while I had a bath.
The phone was ringing while I was having a bath.
The phone rang while I had a bath.
The phone rang while I was having a bath.
Move on from pondering anxiously over bizarre grammatical sentences that none of us ever gonna use.
4. The way I was taught to teach grammar crippled my understanding of grammar. The big lie is that grammar is somehow at the heart what a language is.
5. There really is no need for needs analysis - most students don't know what they need and most students will tell you that they need more grammar.
What students really need is:
✔A repeated exposure to most frequent words in context;
✔A better understanding of how those most frequent words work with other words and how they work with grammar;
✔An advice on how the best to go about learning all this stuff;
✔To listen to and read a wide range of graded texts;
✔A chance to discuss their opinions and ideas, need to be listened to;
✔To be reformulated, to be scaffolded, to be shown better ways of how to do what they want to do.
6. Resistance is futile - but still widespread!
The stronger the resistance the less is learning. Our job is to smooth this lurching this uphill journey towards submission to a kind of unintelligible logic and submission to a different way of framing the world through language. Oil this waters with more noticing, more smiling and saying, Yes I know it's different, crazy English! - that's why I am here (it keeps me in the job)
7. Input is more important than output. The fear of teacher talking time - to be an output focused teacher.
Students don't actually learn by chatting with each other using the language they already came into the class with. We learn language from language! We need a huge amount of input! The input is far more crucial in the classroom than the output is.
8. There is nothing as practical as good theory.
Insatiable thirst for recipes. The feeding which we get at any teaching conferences: I have to get something to come away with that I could do in my classroom. The method is wrongly overvalued over language knowledge and language awareness.
Any innovation is ultimately pointless if we follow basic simple principles of what we do on a day-to-day basis:
➡Ensure Ss meet useful language,
➡Help them to grasp it;
➡Help them to notice aspect of it;
➡Get them to practice it;
➡Get them to revise it;
➡Repeat 🔃
9. The vast majority of mistakes really aren't to do with grammar. There is a wider range of linguistic problems:
Meanings have been semi-digested but the students don't have the sense of the context;
Meanings have been expressed but clumsily;
Ss are bringing over the ways of expressing their ideas from L1
10. The main point of focusing on pronunciation is focusing on the ability to hear and to understand spoken language.
Drilling chunks like: It was a bit of a nightmare!
"the jungle of spoken language" a book by Richard Coldwell "Phonology for listening".
11. We've been in thrall to the cults of Learning Styles, NLP & Multiple Intelligences for far too long.
12. A lesson is not a course.
A course needs to be tightly woven. It needs balance of input, balance of more social language, more academic, more professional language, a balance of light and shade, activity and task time balance, in-built recycling of language - none of these happens without a conscious thought, without planning in advance of delivery of a course. Create an umbrella or a thread which weaves through the lessons. There needs to be a theoretical and conceptual framework which facilitates this kind of interweaving.
13. The group is more important than the individual. Individual is ultimately secondary to the collective. The dynamic of the group is much more crucial than individuals in it. where all of the members value each other equally and they all realise that their own development and progress is tied into that of the other person. Our job is to emphasize the commonality over difference and our failure to do this results in a kind of catastrophic teacher failure on occasion.
14. Phrasal verbs continue to be incredibly badly taught!
15. Skills based lessons are a total waste of time! The skills do not exist outside the language and outside the context. They're nontransferable, they're non context independent. Use the text as a vehicle to the new language and as a prompt to further discussion.
16. We are not the world. 63% of the world does not yet have access to the internet.
17. Teaching technologically means ever more work in future!
Retro futurists' idea that We were taught - that technology would liberate us in future into a life of massively increased leisure time. We vanish for days down online rabbit holes trying to work. Turned out to be a bit of a lie. We are bombarded usually by strange numbers: 17 apps that your learners must use! 39 ways to using youtube clip!
18. We need more Michaels. Make time to read properly, read books. These four authors are a good place to start.
19. Teaching is not art or science, it's a craft. It requires a level of artistry and a level of wisdom and a level of skill which is acquired by repeating the same tasks over and over again.
20. Times are getting tougher than tough.
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