{"id":62,"date":"2015-06-18T08:24:59","date_gmt":"2015-06-18T08:24:59","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/freelanceteacherselfdevelopment.wordpress.com\/?p=62"},"modified":"2015-06-18T08:24:59","modified_gmt":"2015-06-18T08:24:59","slug":"affective-teacher-talk","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/getgreatenglish.com\/ftsd\/2015\/06\/18\/affective-teacher-talk\/","title":{"rendered":"Affective Teacher Talk"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>On Twitter, <a href=\"http:\/\/theotherthingsmatter.wordpress.com\">Kevin Stein<\/a> tapped into loads of teachers&#8217; pet peeves when he asked <a href=\"https:\/\/twitter.com\/hashtag\/isitreallyuseful?src=hash&amp;vertical=default&amp;f=tweets\">#IsItReallyUseful<\/a> ? (N.B. I know that a lot of my posts seem Twitter-related.)<br \/>\nI think that what it comes down to is just going into the classroom and making sure that students don&#8217;t hate English any more than they did before going in. Some ways that we wind students up might be:<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>Inadvertently insulting them<\/li>\n<p>Do you repeat the same questions when students don&#8217;t answer? Could you rephrase it so you don&#8217;t make it look like you think they are stupid? (Allwright &amp; Bailey)<\/p>\n<li>Being patronizing<\/li>\n<p>Almost all display questions (questions you already know the answer to) are ludicrous. &#8220;What&#8217;s something that&#8217;s blue?&#8221; My mood? A corpse? Instead, we might ask, &#8220;What is something you like that&#8217;s blue?&#8221; It&#8217;s not perfect but it sounds less like teacher talk and might be useful one day.<\/p>\n<li>&#8216;Anyone else? Bueller?&#8217;<\/li>\n<div class=\"jetpack-video-wrapper\"><span class=\"embed-youtube\" style=\"text-align:center; display: block;\"><iframe loading=\"lazy\" class=\"youtube-player\" width=\"640\" height=\"360\" src=\"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/embed\/uhiCFdWeQfA?version=3&#038;rel=1&#038;showsearch=0&#038;showinfo=1&#038;iv_load_policy=1&#038;fs=1&#038;hl=en-US&#038;autohide=2&#038;wmode=transparent\" allowfullscreen=\"true\" style=\"border:0;\" sandbox=\"allow-scripts allow-same-origin allow-popups allow-presentation\"><\/iframe><\/span><\/div>\n<p>I did this loads when I first started. I think that discovery learning and eliciting have their place but when it looks like students don&#8217;t know, to maintain sanity, how about focussing on what they need to get there or relating the language to their personal experiences?<\/p>\n<li>Empty praise<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>Are you clear about what is great when you exclaim, &#8216;Great!&#8217;? If it isn&#8217;t great, say so. You don&#8217;t have to be Sirius Snape about it but you might say, &#8220;Thanks for trying. It&#8217;s a bit difficult.&#8221; You might then go on and recast or scaffold what the learner was trying to say.<br \/>\nSo, basically, we need to try to figure out if we&#8217;re teaching in an annoying way. Not all students love language study but almost everyone will communicate when faced with human contact. I think if we bear the above in mind (and by &#8216;we&#8217; I also mean &#8216;me&#8217;), we stand a good chance of making classroom experiences better.<br \/>\n<b>References<\/b><br \/>\nAllwright, D and Bailey, K. (1991) Focus on the Language Classroom. Cambridge: CUP.<br \/>\n<i>Again<\/i><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>On Twitter, Kevin Stein tapped into loads of teachers&#8217; pet peeves when he asked #IsItReallyUseful ? (N.B. I know that a lot of my posts seem Twitter-related.) I think that what it comes down to is just going into the classroom and making sure that students don&#8217;t hate English any more than they did before [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_is_tweetstorm":false,"jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","enabled":false}}},"categories":[8,10],"tags":[28,31,130],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/pa34By-10","_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/getgreatenglish.com\/ftsd\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/62"}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/getgreatenglish.com\/ftsd\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/getgreatenglish.com\/ftsd\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/getgreatenglish.com\/ftsd\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/getgreatenglish.com\/ftsd\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=62"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/getgreatenglish.com\/ftsd\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/62\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/getgreatenglish.com\/ftsd\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=62"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/getgreatenglish.com\/ftsd\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=62"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/getgreatenglish.com\/ftsd\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=62"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}