Emergent Language... Every Little Helps

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image credit: Scott Thornbury on #ELTpics

I spent a very pleasant couple of hours sitting in a beer garden the other day with Mr @esolcourses, drinking wine and chatting about a really productive unplugged one-to-one session earlier on in the week, where I'd used a TESCO food magazine as an impromptu student workbook for learning new vocabulary and clarifying various grammar points.

This amused Mr @esolcourses greatly, and the ensuing conversation went a bit like this:

Him: "So: in other words, you were just winging it basically?"

Me: "Not at all. Only one student turned up for the lesson. We had a brief discussion about what she would like to do in class that day, and she said she needed more vocabulary for talking about food and cooking. We used the magazine as a discussion prompt, and for taking notes."

Him: "So: in other words, you winged it, aided and abetted by a copy of TESCO's food magazine?"

Me: "Not at all. I'd taken the magazine into class to use as a resource. We spent an initial half-hour or so chatting about food, work and cooking before we got to the point where we looked at the magazine. By that stage, I had a good idea of the language areas she needed to work on and I was able to channel the conversation in a productive direction."

Him: "So: in other words, you chatted for a bit, and then you winged it?"

Me: "Not at all. They way we used the magazine was highly focused and directed. We worked on expanding her vocabulary for types of foods and methods of preparing foods, and we talked about the difference between countable and countable nouns (we say two bowls of rice, not two rices, etc");

We looked at plural spelling rules (tomatoes, potatoes, etc) and clarified the difference between "how long do you need to cook it for?" (a baked potato) vs "how long have you been cooking for?" (as a hobby).

We followed this with a role play for a job interview and a bit of reflection about what we'd covered in the lesson, and finished up with a discussion about some of the other areas of her English she'd like to work on. At the end of the lesson, the student took her Tesco's Finest workbook home with her to revise what we'd done in class and make further notes.

Him: "Fair enough. But how do you square that kind of teaching with demands from higher up that you stick to lesson plans and teach to the syllabus?"

I was forced to concede he had a point there; because of course, you can't. Or at least, not officially, anyway. When did the education system lose the plot and move from learning for learning's sake to never mind the quality feel the width, I can't help wonder? And why didn't anybody kick up an almighty fuss back when it did?

As we finished up our drinks and prepared to go, I quizzed him a bit about the teachers he'd had when he was younger. Was there anything he remembered about the teachers who had inspired him in some way which struck him as being different to the way that other teachers went about doing things? This was his response:

"The most memorable teacher I had didn't do much in the way of teaching, really. We just sat around in a circle during his lessons and talked about the meaning of life and such..."

Sounds like a pretty good recipe for learning to me ;-)

Sue