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At my school we have set up a couple of What's App group chats - one for managing Zoom difficulties (and communicating admin-related messages) and one for generally keeping in touch. But as with many online efforts, you only get out of it what you're willing to put in - so if you don't reach out to your peers, you can't expect really to hear back from them...
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If you're looking for a good Facebook group, might I recommend this one? https://www.facebook.com/groups/VirtualTeachersLounge/
It was created a few weeks ago specifically to help teachers make the transition to online teaching.
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I would also add that online teaching can lead to burn-out quicker than regular face-to-face teaching (or at least that's been my impression so far!). There's a lot more visual strain when using a computer than when you're in a physical space with the student.
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Quizlet reminds me of Memrise...
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Christopher Walker made a comment
This video really highlights to me the importance of good sitting position when you're teaching online. If you lean too close to the webcam you start to look very imposing! But at the same time you don't want to look too relaxed, if you're slouching in your seat.
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Christopher Walker made a comment
The video highlights one of the biggest problems on Zoom - that when you move students to a Breakout room, you lose the screen being shared in the Main Meeting room. I'm still trying to think of a good way to get around this issue. Does anyone have any ideas?
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Christopher Walker made a comment
In Zoom, if you forget to click 'Share Computer Sound' when you share the screen, don't worry - it's available during the screen share when you go up to the top of the screen and click 'More' and the same option will be available there.
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Let's also remember that students connecting to the lesson via mobile devices will not be able to type in Zoom in the first place.
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Absolutely, @TonyTyc - I couldn't agree with you more!
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Christopher Walker made a comment
I hate to say it, but CBeebies is a terrible resource for online teaching, for one simple reason: they employ some kind of IP tracker so that if, like me, you live outside the UK, you are automatically redirected to a localised website, with no option for presentation in English.
So many websites do this these days, and it really annoys me. There's so much...
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Teaching reading can actually be vastly superior in the online classroom - or at least that's how it feels after a whole week of teaching online! I might change my mind, of course, but having the text up in front of you, with annotation a possibility, makes it much easier to dissect the text and to learn how it's put together.
But to do this, you must have...
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I like the idea of being in control of my own destiny - if I'm working for something of my own creation, I feel much more motivated to put my whole being into the work. Working for others is fine in terms of it giving me a reliable source of income, but I much prefer the idea of seeing my brand grow.
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Christopher Walker made a comment
I disagree with Hattie just in principle - nobody tells me what to do!!! :)
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Christopher Walker replied to Jenny Gilbert
Classroom management has always been my weak point, so I can really feel for you here! It gets even harder online, as you say: if a student isn't working, what can you do to get them on track?
One thing I'd suggest would be to speak directly to the student - put them in a separate breakout room if you're on Zoom, for instance - and ask them how they feel,...
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Christopher Walker replied to John Doherty
As far as I understand it, you can copy up to 20% of a book or resource and stay within the copyright law - that's if you, the teacher, are the only person with that resource. If your students have a coursebook and you have one too, you will be fine using either the presentation software included, or digital scans of the book. You wouldn't be sharing something...
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Christopher Walker made a comment
Testing the platform before you use it is a very important point, but I'd also add something I learned back in the day when I was a web designer: test every version of the platform too. If you can make Zoom work fine on a computer - great. But what about on a phone? On a tablet? Android vs Apple? Mac vs Windows? You need to know a bit about every version so...
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A great idea, @AmandaHewes - we've been doing something like this at my school since we had to switch to 100% online teaching. The first lesson with our groups was cut in length from 90 to 45 minutes, and most of the time was spent doing activities that would get the students talking to each other and interacting with the platform.
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Great idea to send things out beforehand... unless the students will be working on their phone, in which case they might not be able to see the documents, or to manage switching between the documents and the Zoom app.
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Christopher Walker made a comment
The only problem I've had with Zoom so far - and this could be me more than the platform - is that if I share a picture with my students through the Share Screen option, and then send them to their Breakout Rooms, they can't see the picture anymore - which is a problem if I want them to discuss it in detail.
Any help?
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Christopher Walker made a comment
I've used the whiteboard in Zoom to good effect to make sure the students leave with a written record of the new lexis and grammar covered in the lesson - it's easy to save the file and share it through the chat.
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Yes - you've highlighted one of the biggest problems with online teaching, which is that you need students or volunteers to help you practice the tools, and it isn't always easy to find these. For example, to practice using breakout rooms you ideally need four volunteers at an absolute minimum.
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Why can't your student see your face when you're using a website in Zoom? I shared the screen with a student just today and we had no problem maintaining visual contact with one another.
For me a more annoying issue is that it's hard to switch between sharing a website and sharing the whiteboard in Zoom - the process of switching is more elaborate than just...
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Christopher Walker made a comment
I don't think any of the teacher statements precisely fits my own context. I'm interested in online teaching to keep up with current trends (like Jade) but that's not the main driving force here. I also want to expand my work possibilities, but not with the aim of reducing my teaching hours - I wouldn't want online teaching necessarily to replace my current...
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Christopher Walker made a comment
I'm fine with teaching individuals online. With higher level learners, I often do FutureLearn courses with them (and I can do this easily by using the Share Screen feature in Zoom, for instance) and as well as getting the course content, we also look at the language used in its delivery.
I'm most interested in learning how to apply my teaching skills to the...
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Hi, I'm Chris - I've been an EFL teacher for over a decade, and I'm increasingly becoming interested in online teaching - especially right now, as the corona virus has meant a lot of us moving online to deliver our regular lessons.
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Broken ceramics are quite a specialist field - I imagine it must be quite lucrative! Good luck on the course :)
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Christopher Walker made a comment
An excellent course. And for anyone interested, the University of Leicester offer an equally excellent MA Applied Linguistics and TESOL degree - I'm nearing the end of this very course, and hope to graduate this year.
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Christopher Walker made a comment
I have to say, this and the last few steps have been really wonderful - getting into the nitty-gritty of linguistics in this way is so rewarding and offers so much insight!
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Christopher Walker made a comment
Generally, the rule I've encountered most often is that 'must' is a direct command, while 'have to' has come to you via an intermediary.
"Ssh! You must be quiet," the librarian said to me.
"Ssh! You have to be quiet," the other student said to me in the library, pointing at the sign on the wall.
Personally I'm not sure if the rule really holds - or...
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Christopher Walker made a comment
I was surprised by how much Thatcher's voice had changed over the years - that was quite new to me. Pronunciation and phonology are areas that I know well but in the broadest of terms - the addition of specific knowledge will help me move forward as a teacher.
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Very helpful - thanks!
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Christopher Walker made a comment
I'm fairly conscious of my vocal style having shifted or evolved over the years. I imagine I sound rather different now than I did ten years ago when I first became an EFL teacher - over time I've adapted how I speak so that I can be better understood by my students.
The negative side there though is that, by becoming more easily understood, I no longer...
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And yet, it's worth pointing out that this man's accent proved no obstacle in securing for himself the love of a beautiful woman. That's why I like the advert myself - it simultaneously makes a joke of a person's accent, and also shows that we are wrong for laughing.
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This wouldn't lead to a pidgin, as it does not reduce the grammatical and lexical concerns of the language to an intolerable point for native speakers. Nor would it require native / highly proficient users of the language to adjust or to learn a new way of speaking.
It would definitely reduce the workload for learners and for their teachers. When I think...
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Yes, at least with a phonetic transcription.
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Christopher Walker made a comment
I like Louis CK's take on the urban drawl you get in some parts of the US these days: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IADkF1LbyfM
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Christopher Walker replied to Uche Umunna
Well, yes, but consider the bigger picture. If pronunciation does change, and it changes more over time, imagine what you could do if a couple of hundred years pass. A lot of the pronunciation patterns that Shakespeare used are no longer part of the language - if we heard an original production of a Shakespearean play, we might not understand as much as we think.
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Christopher Walker made a comment
Receiving feedback is terribly difficult as it risks your ego. I know of many people who then need to employ face-saving techniques (such as disagreeing with the critic!) to manage the situation.
The little thought that helps me to navigate the process of receiving feedback is that the story being critiqued wasn't written by me - it was written by the me...
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Christopher Walker made a comment
A favourite - '2666' by Roberto Bolano. I loved how he drew me in with careful descriptions and characterisation. He was in no hurry and allowed the prose space in which to breathe, much as the realists like Zola did a century earlier. This book feels as if it contains a whole world, and though it is massive I've read it twice - each time, I gasped when I came...
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@EllisSmith I don't think 'he said she said' constructions are bad. Your brain becomes blind to them in the way your nose does. Better to mark dialogue this way than to run through the thesaurus looking for clever alternatives - they draw too much attention, like when someone points out that you're breathing noisily, and then all you can think about is your...
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Christopher Walker made a comment
Thank you for this course - it has been both fascinating and rewarding!
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I remember a difficult time in multidisciplinary working - quite similar to the artist-engineer debate of earlier on.
A while back I dreamed of being a webpage designer - this was around the year 2001 - and I even got some commissions from different sources. A friend and I wanted to go into business together making such pages. I was the technical guy, more...
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My discipline is EFL - English as a Foreign Language. It's related to Applied Linguistics and to Pedagogy or Teaching, but in an interesting way - quite often the two sides do not communicate well.
1. How is success or progress measured in your own discipline?
As with many disciplines, success is often measured by how readily the results of a piece of...
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This is not something that differs across disciplines, necessarily, but certainly across languages: in Polish academic writing it is much more usual to see citations that are framed in purple prose:
-- As Wilson (2004) rightly postulates, "blah blah blah."
-- Peters (2018) masterfully writes: "more blah blah blah."British academic writing is much more...
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And for a chemist it would have meant something else entirely - just be glad that one wasn't around when you wanted more 'organic' transitions. It could have become quit messy!
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One great advantage of experiencing the multi-disciplinary world is that you learn new viewpoints through which to consider where you started. For example, I first trained in Physics, a hard(ish) science; then I became an EFL teacher and grew interested in Applied Linguistics, which is much softer.
But now, when I consider how Physics was taught to me...
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I work in EFL (English as a Foreign Language). Most of my work involves teaching, but recently I've moved towards teacher training as well. It's interesting to see how hard it can be to train teachers on new techniques, but also to inform them about non-teaching matters, such as the rationale behind new assessment protocols. I feel that there is something...
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You're thinking of Dr Tobias Funke in 'Arrested Development' :)
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Christopher Walker made a comment
I understand that taking a stereotype and then subverting it is one approach, but isn't it better to avoid stereotypes altogether? Just as two wrongs do not make a right, two stereotypes do not necessarily make a rounded character.
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If I might... don't you think that you've got the two the wrong way round? Reading your 'Roundness' example, the woman comes off as weak and emotional, and the guy comes across as overly brusque and macho. I actually think the 'Flatness' example does a better job of presenting real characters - we fill in the blanks in our mind. Do you know what I mean?
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Christopher Walker made a comment
My story opens with a guy in a cafe observing a young couple (or what he perceives to be a young couple) having a bit of a tiff, with the male partner then walking off looking quite upset. The character flaw in the observer though is there by definition - the whole scene is none of his business, and yet he is immensely curious about what's going on, and when...
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Christopher Walker replied to Mary S
I know what you mean, but I can think of one way to see this formula at work. Watch a film - any film - and consider how boring it would have been if the main character decided to ignore the conflict.
For example - Harry Potter is the character, and the conflict he has is with Voldemort and the whole destiny thing. Imagine if Harry Potter had said,...
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Christopher Walker replied to Andrew Walker
Absolutely! That's the problem with these quasi-mathematical suggestions - they don't go the other way, as mathematical formulae should!
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Christopher Walker made a comment
Michael Kohlhaas is an interesting story, but for anyone who has read it, the idea of using the character as a good example for writing fiction might sound slightly odd. I've read the story - it's good for the first 20% but it soon goes off the rails, almost as if the author, von Kleist, had thought of a great character to get the ball rolling, but hadn't...
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Christopher Walker replied to Stef V.
Nice ideas! Perhaps she can't go to the cafe with the others *because* of the dog, thus making it an excuse. "Oh, so sorry darlings, but it's this little one's nap time. I'll join you on the next occasion."
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Christopher Walker replied to Nicholas Fletcher
Oh, and who travels by public bus - with a dog no less! - when they're on the way to see their stockbroker? Did he really lose *all* of her money?
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Christopher Walker replied to Nicholas Fletcher
Do be careful of logical inconsistencies - "When Maisie spotted her bus stop approaching, she got off the bus..." - do you mean she got off the bus while it was still moving? I've also never known an office's entrance to be a revolving door - usually the building has a revolving door, and once you have passed through this you reach the offices inside.
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Christopher Walker replied to Christopher Walker
@KevinS. Thank you for your comment! It's probably just as well that you can't read my assignment - it really wasn't very good. As for your own story, what I've noticed some writers do is they mark shifts in perspective either by starting a new chapter, or by using an asterisk to show that a new section has been started.
If you put us in the first...
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Christopher Walker made a comment
You have to wear your research lightly - I remember hearing that piece of advice from several quarters (and I think it was mentioned in the audio recording too). Very useful to bear in mind.
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Christopher Walker made a comment
I heard the advice that writers should 'write what they know.' This at first seems limiting - teachers should write stories that involve teachers, footballers footballers, and so on. But on reflection, and thanks in part to this course, I now see what is missing from the advice: "Write what you know, and if you don't know, find out all you need and make it a...
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Interesting - I hated all that unnecessary verbiage, and feel that most of the writing I dislike (and there's a lot of that) is made up of the trimmings that other writers I like better would have cut from their first draft.
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Christopher Walker made a comment
The example is much more befitting of the 'noir' genre. Noir doesn't go in for adjectives or long descriptive sentences. Noir keeps it short. Blunt. Cuts to the quick and then moves on, like a hired killer.
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Christopher Walker replied to patricia knight
I think the first sentence doesn't read right - probably because of 'in the rush hour on street pedestrians.' The prepositions in this sequence obscure the meaning of what you want to say.
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Christopher Walker made a comment
Nobody noticed the storm clouds gathering in the sky above their heads. And nobody noticed Hilary walking among the rush hour crowd, a storm raging in her heart, her snub-nosed gun concealed within the folds of her raincoat.
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Christopher Walker made a comment
Emma said that she wanted me to be her teacher in kindergarten. "Miss Anna isn't good to me," she explained. "She shouts."
"She's only shouted once, though, hasn't she?" I knew about the time that Emma had taken too long to finish her sandwich at lunch, and Miss Anna's patience had been expended.
"Twice," Emma said after thinking hard.
Twice, I thought.... -
Christopher Walker made a comment
The noticeboards in the classroom seemed so very chatty, not at all like the shy, quiet board that I had hanging by a rusty hook in the hallway where I meant to keep important messages, but never did.
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Christopher Walker made a comment
The guy on the bus with those big broad shoulders and the camo-coloured coat: he had his greying hair tied up in a bun with a piece of plastic the same colour as the petunias my mother keeps in a vase by the window in the kitchen.
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Christopher Walker replied to Anita Scott
I love that word - 'contemporaneously'. It expresses a specific meaning so well, and yet looks so long and looms large over the sentence. Brilliant :)
Oh, yes, and I'm quite the same - there isn't always time to write something down, but it's good to save some time for catching up when you can.
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Christopher Walker made a comment
I made three promises to my wife as I left our apartment this morning: that I would only buy the items she had written down on the shopping list; that I wouldn't get any bananas if they looked as bruised as the last lot; and that I would call her if I was in any doubt about anything. What I didn't tell her as the door was closing was that I didn't appreciate...
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Christopher Walker replied to Greg Schroeder
Great ideas! I especially think that creating a welcoming environment is an important step in lowering anxiety in the classroom. It's amazing the effect a comfortable place to sit and study can have - at least, that's the case for me.
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Christopher Walker made a comment
I remember my French classes in the two years leading up to GCSEs. The first teacher I had wanted a nice, friendly, relaxed environment, and I never felt any anxiety towards the lessons - and nor did I feel inclined to prepare myself to face those situations that might provoke anxiety in me.
Then, I switched to a different class, where the teacher was more...
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Christopher Walker made a comment
Would the games that we play in the EFL classroom constitute a worthwhile context for facilitative anxiety? Stress levels rise when students enter into competition with one another, but the excitement of the game makes the lesson more fun. Or would this mean that, for some, the amount of anxiety experienced in a game goes beyond the facilitative and into the...
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Christopher Walker made a comment
I think the publication year for Little's "Learner autonomy and second/foreign language learning" might be 2002. I found a paper by Benson (2007) that cites it - "Autonomy in language teaching and learning."
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Christopher Walker replied to Greg Schroeder
@GregSchroeder I would agree, though not 100%. I help students prepare for the various Cambridge English tests, and it's not just about 'teaching to the test.' It's important that students know how they're being assessed. For example, with the Writing paper, I show students what the difference is between a strong pass and a bare pass, so that they can evaluate...
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@WayneBrown yes, though it's English as a Foreign Language, rather than 'English' as a core curriculum subject.
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I have this all the time when I'm trying to speak Polish - it's a great way of getting my students to laugh.
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Christopher Walker replied to Annie T
Totally agree. There's a danger that by focusing on the exam, we forget to provide language input - snaring the student in a vicious cycle of test-feedback-test-feedback... but they never improve, because to do so requires stepping outside of that cycle for some time.
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I think that the devil is often in the details. I look at my own students here in Poland as an example. They are constantly studying for the various tests that their teachers have arranged for them, and with the ultimate aim to pass the school-leaving exam. What this means though is that, since the curriculum is so large, no time can be spent on asking...
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Christopher Walker replied to Elisa Bird
Yes, the danger of inaccurately-recorded information would be huge. Imagine if you were an A student whose results were recorded as Ds? Something like this happened to my brother during his GCSE French - the examiners lost his Listening test, so he scored zero for that component. Luckily the appeal judged in his favour...
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Christopher Walker replied to Greg Schroeder
There's a certain whiff of the Chinese social credit score about this idea, don't you think? You can see in a dystopian future that if your score drops too low, you can't move freely around the country, or you will not be eligible for healthcare, that kind of thing.
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Christopher Walker replied to Glenn Fulcher
The quote was by Eugene McCarthy, that rarest thing - both a politician and a poet. Not, of course, to be confused with Senator Joseph McCarthy, who would have said no such thing.
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Christopher Walker replied to Greg Schroeder
On Shohamy, I'd go slightly further - isn't the suggestion also that it is the test makers who gets to define the difference between a winner and a loser? That for me is the problem.
To defend Fulcher ever so slightly, the 'inequality of outcomes, not of opportunities' part means something different to me - if two people take a test to determine, say,...
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I should declare an interest at the start of this reply - I am an EFL teacher. Personally, I think that arriving immigrants should have a level of around A2 or B1, but that successful applicants for visas or asylum should then be offered free or discounted English as a Second or Other Language lessons. This would help to bring their level up to what might be...
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It's easy to accept the myths at face value, here and in every other case, simply because doing so requires less thinking, and much less effort. But the moment you start to question the myths, and apply the standards of fair evidence to what you believe... well, to my mind, that's when life becomes more interesting, if nothing else. But you do have to think in...
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@JenniferPearce Yes, I totally agree. 'By Hook or By Crook' is fascinating, and I was lucky enough to talk to David Crystal himself last year at a conference in Bratislava about it. Fascinating man!
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Christopher Walker made a comment
As an EFL teacher I always try to tread carefully around these sorts of sentences. While they are certainly 'ungrammatical', they do communicate their intended message well... but the problem is that when native speakers of a language make a mistake or say something ungrammatical, they tend to be consistent with it. The same is not true of language learners....
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Christopher Walker made a comment
Some interesting ideas here - but I wish links were provided in a References section on this page. What did Ehri and Roberts write in 2006?
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Christopher Walker made a comment
I would love to do some kind of liberal arts-related degree (or certificate, even), but I'd need to do it as a distance learner - I live in Poland and moving to Leeds is not an option, regardless of how attractive the city and university both are.
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Christopher Walker made a comment
I find that searching through Google Scholar leads me to the information I want and need more rapidly than by other means. But looking at the Bibliography in your course notes is definitely a good start!
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This was a good exercise, though I wish we had more than three case studies to look at - if there are three examples and three options, it does make the final question quite easy...
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Which is why so many people are keen to share their opinions, but these same people get upset when their opinions are challenged. James O'Brien runs a fascinating radio broadcast on LBC where he does just that - he asks people their opinion and then asks why they believe it to be true. Nine times out of ten the argument collapses as soon as it is considered...
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Why do you think so? To think critically you have to use more than just your opinion - you have to say "How can I support my point of view?" Response 3 is the only one to do that.
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I think the basic rule is "Think and read before you speak." So if you don't have any knowledge about a subject, wait until you do before you offer an opinion.
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Christopher Walker made a comment
Thank you - this has been an enlightening course, and having two written assignments to produce during the course certainly added to its value.
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Christopher Walker made a comment
An excellent video - thank you for not shying away from showing us what you were describing. It turned my stomach but that was part of the point.
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Christopher Walker made a comment
I think that it's only a matter of time before euthanasia becomes an accepted means of reaching the end of one's life - certainly it allows for a lot more dignity than is currently seen as acceptable by many. When this happens, the role of palliative medical practitioners will become much more important.
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Christopher Walker made a comment
Here in Poland it's customary to advertise the funeral in the local community with a kind of 'death notice' - a printout on A4 paper with a black cross on which is written the details of the recently deceased. There is an open invitation for people to attend a service at the church.
I've only been to one funeral here in Poland, and it was a very sombre...
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Christopher Walker made a comment
Art can help us think imaginatively and sympathetically about every possible subject, so yes, it can help us think differently about mental illness as well.
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Christopher Walker made a comment
Wow - that is a massive piece of music, unlike anything I've heard (or seen, for that matter) in quite some time.
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Juxtaposition is a very valuable technique. Many people have had idea A, and many people have had idea B, but how many people have explored the juxtaposition of A and B? I also agree with your point that studying from a wide variety of subjects can lead us into new creative territory - thanks for mentioning that!
