The adventures of Marcos and Maria: ELT material for low income communities

Three years ago I was stuck at home for two weeks following minor surgery. Two weeks during which I couldn't leave the house, couldn't cook and couldn't really get off the sofa. After quickly gaining and overcoming an addiction to Project Runway, I was still left twiddling my thumbs. At the time I was helping out a local NGO, teaching English classes to a group of adults with low literacy levels in Portuguese and also to a group of mixed ability and mixed age children. I was struggling to adapt ready made materials to the students' realities and was constantly surprised with new learning barriers, many of which I believed stemmed from the education they received in the home and at school. The problems Brazilians face daily in terms of infrastructure and access to quality educuation are well documented and it wouldn't be unfair to say that reading and literature are not present in many low income households. As a self-confessed bookworm and ELT professional, I refuse to let that pass. I'm that aunt/cousin/godmother who gives every child a book for their birthday/Christmas present! For me, the power and potential of reading is indescribable. 

Therefore, during my period of confinement I started thinking about how I could make my social project more meaningful and more relevant to the children's lives and realities. And thus, The Adventures of Marcos and Maria was born! As aventuras de Marcos e Maria (in Portuguese) grew from an idea about travelling cousins, who find a magic phone manual with the power to transport them to different English-speaking cities around the world, into a series of educational material that has been designed for use with children from low-income communities in Latin America. Thinking about the multiple aims of a social project, I designed the material to combine English language teaching with discussions about citizenship and activities designed to improve interest in reading in Portuguese/Spanish.  Rather than a traditionally structure English course, I wanted the material to motivate students’ interest in education and learning and to form more socially aware young citizens with a clearer view of their role in society.

All of the characters and themes have been designed and created to reflect the reality of young people living in low-income communities, through the physical features of the characters, family structure and issues addressed in the material. 

Only being able to work on the material in my free time meant that it took a while to get off the ground. However, I'm very pleased to report that a grant proposal was accepted last year which has meant that I have been able to print and start using the material with 60 children in an NGO in Duque de Caxias, Brazil. I hope to write further blog posts about the successes (or areas for improvement) of using this multidisciplinary material with students in a low income community. 

General musings...

I'm currently taking an online teacher trainer (tutor) course with the British Council and through this course I have been fortunate enough to "meet" (virtually of course) many EFL professionals from all over Brazil. In the first week we have been actively participating in forums, discussing our professional backgrounds and sharing our experiences. Reading about my course colleagues has got me thinking about the validity of the EFL field, especially for native speakers. 

Being a native speaker, teaching English as a foreign language is often the "fall-back" for people just out of college or University who want to travel and who often use it as an excuse to spend a few months in a country or make some quick cash. While there's nothing wrong with this (everyone has the right to choose their own path), sometimes I feel this devalues- without being too dramatic and generalising- the field. Some native speakers don't feel that an EFL teacher is a "proper" teacher and that the only qualification that you need is to know the language however how can you expect to help your student to their full potential so that they can effectively communicate in English without any pedagogical orientation? The spectrum of specialisations is great and I think that this diversity of the EFL field should be celebrated and appreciated more.

What's a verb? Overcoming socio-economic hurdles in ELT

As globalisation continues to dominate, learning English is becoming a more attractive prospect and worthwhile investment for members of lower socio-economic groups in Brazil. Those who had never previously thought they would need to learn English as finding that it is a pre requisite in their chosen careers. Nonetheless, although learning English is more accessible from a financial perspective, given the increase in lower priced courses, sometimes students from lower socio-economic groups have had little exposure to English or incomplete mainstream education. If the teacher isn’t prepared for this, difficulties can arise and students can be demotivated and frustrated. Combining research and my own experience I have developed some activities that can be used with these groups to encourage production and ease the learning process. 

Here are my top 5 tips: 

• Help learners to see themselves speaking English.

• Help learners identify the extent to which they are already in contact with English on a day to day basis without even realising it.

• Be wary of picture elicitation.

• Personalise personalisation activities.

• Analyse your approach to grammar.

Whilst they may be motivated to learn English to increase their job prospects I have found that students often view this as an abstract concept instead of identifying how and when they will really use English. One way of doing this is showing them pictures of typical industries in which English is necessary (if possible use the most common employers of  your students) and ask them to discuss in pairs (in L1 if necessary) about what type of language or expressions someone working in that area might need to know in English.

My favourite activity for doing this is a jeopardy style game using commonly used "international" words such as mouse, sexy, jeans, etc in which students stand in two lines; one line facing and one line facing away from the board. They then work in pairs, describing the word that appears on the board to their partner who has their back to it and then rotating after their partner has guessed. This can be done in L1 as a way of motivating students. 

Picture elicitation is one of the easiest and  most common ways of getting students talking and introducing a topic, however sometimes something simple like showing a picture of a  famous (to you) city such as New York may not generate any discussion as students may not have the background knowledge to recognise such places (this has happened to me before!). Instead, ask students to describe what they can see in the pictures and to speculate about where it might be or what might be happening. Then ask them what and if they know anything about the place or event. If they do, great. If not, they've already produced so you can move on.  

Typical personalisation activities in course books rely on students experiences however be aware that students may have limited life experiences and therefore cannot talk about time in which they went on a trip, did something exciting, did something dangerous, etc. If your course curriculum calls for them to talk in pairs about their last holiday to practise using the past tense, for example, try giving them a picture of another person and asking them to invent a holiday for that person. This takes the pressure of them and avoids any awkward silences and feeling of inferiority. 

In a communicative methodology teachers generally use a hybrid approach to grammar which involves an implicit contextual presentation and then an explicit presentation of form followed by practice and production. We may often elicit from learners, asking them to identify the adjective or using phrases such as well it’s the third person so we need to add an s to the verb, often forgetting that many learners have an insufficient or inefficient L1 education which prevents them from being able to identifying these grammatical components. Therefore avoid over using grammatical terminology. Try referring to a verb as "an action", a subject pronoun as "who", etc to avoid alienating and demotivating students. I also like to alternate the classic PPP with task based learning when possible. 

Recognising and addressing learners’ needs is the only way to ensure successful learning; neglecting these increases the chances of abandonment by the learner and feelings of frustration in both the learner and the teacher. 

I hope you find these ideas helpful!

Collaboration

Collaboration is a hot commodity in ELT at the moment. The dictionary definition is "working together to achieve a shared goal". I believe that in  ELT there isn’t one shared goal but many: motivating ourselves and motivating our students, reducing STT and increasing TTT, dealing with that student that refuses to ask to go the toilet in English, the list is endless. Nonetheless, no matter what the overall goal, collaboration is perhaps the most powerful resource that ELT teachers have. Even if you teach the same level with the same curriculum and using the same course book over and over for a long period of time, no two groups will ever be the same and perhaps one lesson plan that had students in fits of laughter, climbing over each other to speak will fall completely flat with another group. Thus being able to share and learn from a worldwide community in which you will almost certainly find someone who has been there, done that is invaluable.

Without a doubt, the internet is, as always, the biggest and most easily accessed resource for collaboration however for all its positive points the internet can sometimes feel a little impersonal. It was out of a desire to see and hear (and perhaps have some hands on practice) how other teachers implement new ideas and materials rather than just read and type about it that led me to sign up to the BRAZ-TESOL conference in Rio de Janeiro this July. In a fit of madness I also submitted an application to present a workshop. I say a fit of madness because I had never attended a conference or ever given a presentation or workshop before yet I thought it would be a brilliant idea to give one at my first ever national event! However, despite a few sleepless nights I can honestly say that it was not madness but in fact a very good decision. Meeting, talking and debating with other teachers who have similar experiences and objectives to myself  was both stimulating and thought provoking. As well as this there is no more rewarding feedback than positive feedback from peers.

Therefore my tip of the week: once in a while switch off the web and switch on to conferences!

(Keep reading the blog as a summary of my workshop will be available in the next post)