Guest post by Alex Case, teacher in Japan and blogger at TEFLtastic.
I’ve somehow managed to keep blogging about TEFL for over six years mainly with the selfish motivation of keeping myself interested in teaching. In a similar way I post my worksheets simply to make the time I spend on them seem less wasted. However, I do sometimes yearn for a larger sense of purpose to keep myself going. The only realistic one I’ve managed to come up with so far is to do my small part to help create free resources online that at least match what a teacher could find in the same amount of time in front of their own or their school’s bookshelves, something that can be done both by posting materials and ideas yourself and making other people’s stuff easier to find by linking to it.
So, how are we doing so far? Is Google now your ultimate lesson planning tool, or would you need a credit card and/ or need to combine it with numerous journeys over to that bookshelf to make it worth spending a couple of minutes on a search engine? And how about when writing an essay or article – do you agree with most of the industry that online references are best avoided or is there a good amount of free stuff online that would make it into your references list?
Or is my aim as pointless and/ or unachievable as the other purposes that I’ve rejected? If so, can you think of a better mission for any TEFLer with their own free-to-access blog/ site out there? Here are some uses free TEFL blogs/ sites have been put to, many of which are less common than they could be, or even used to be:
- Fighting the TEFL powers that be (or at least keeping them on their toes)
- Making us into more of a community, e.g. arranging some other kind of group action such as unionisation
- Warning people about bad schools, qualifications, materials and/ or teaching methodologies
- Giving people a bit of relief from the stress of teaching and lesson planning with humour and/ or revelations of personal difficulties
- Putting a bit of theory into this craft
- Enthusiastically pushing TEFL methodologies and technologies
- Making TEFLers and their lessons more politically aware
- Pushing for improved standards in the industry and working conditions to match that professionalism
Or perhaps anyone who wants to make an impact should bypass teachers entirely and write for net-savvy language learners. Alternatively, are you like one guy who wrote to compliment me on my materials and then said he was offended by me giving them away for free and thought I ought to monetise them?
In summary, how are we doing and how could we do better? Comments below please.
Illustration from http://www.flickr.com/photos/toddle_email_newsletters/
How are we doing in regard to what?
Or looked at in another way, how can we even ask this question if we haven’t agreed on (or clarified) what we wish to measure.
It seems to me one logical question we can fruitfully ask as teachers is:
On average, are students learning the same quality or quantity of English at a faster rate than before?
You could also ask:
Are ELT students happier than before?
or
Are ELT teachers happier than before?
But I am guessing that you would see the impossibility of answering such questions and the fruitlessness of using happiness as the ultimate guage?
So, what exactly is the question you want to answer? Because honestly, after 30 years in this industry, I have no idea how “we” are doing. I can only tell you how “I” am doing.
Thanks for the comment Michael. There are a lot of questions there, but the main one is whether as things stand you would turn to materials and ideas available on the internet for free at least as much as to other sources like books. The main larger question is whether that is even worthwhile as an aim of people contributing such materials and ideas for free.
The only commercial materials that I buy (and use) are graded readers and as far as I can tell there are no free substitutes.
Honestly speaking, I think one-page handouts in the hands of most teachers are nothing more than time wasting filler. They generally don’t fit into a grander “purpose” and they are not designed to be used again later at even greater levels of complexity (in a spiral).
-Teachers that frequently use one-page handouts tend to use them as a convenient shoehorn trying to convince themselves that the materials “fits” with what they are doing.
-I would encourage any teacher to start writing their own material A.S.A.P and then use it again and again in different forms.
-Personally, I don’t like using one-off materials in which further review is not automatically built into the materials.
-The Internet makes publishing one-page handouts much easier, but, I feel in this case, making things easier doesn’t translate into making things better.
-I apologize in advance for stepping on any toes out there.
Is this the same Mike Butler who worked at Interact? Get in touch with Billingham. We’re doing a evening out like back in the day in late July. My e-mail is the same (Yahoo). Yours has changed. Get in touch!
Dave
The only commercial materials that I buy (and use) are graded readers and as far as I can tell there are no free substitutes.
Honestly speaking, I think one-page handouts in the hands of most teachers are nothing more than time wasting filler. They generally don’t fit into a grander “purpose” and they are not designed to be used again later at even greater levels of complexity (in a spiral).
-Teachers that frequently use one-page handouts tend to use them as a convenient shoehorn trying to convince themselves that the materials “fits” with what they are doing.
-I would encourage any teacher to start writing their own material A.S.A.P and then use it again and again in different forms.
-Personally, I don’t like using one-off materials in which further review is not automatically built into the materials.
-The Internet makes publishing one-page handouts much easier, but, I feel in this case, making things easier doesn’t translate into making things better.
-I apologize in advance for stepping on any toes out there.
Hi Alex, a very timely and thought provoking post. As a publisher of innovative ELT materials that work with free social media in a way that most teachers are unfamiliar with I have always had the “free” thing going round in my head. I give some stuff away and charge for other stuff.
Being active online I always run into people who think that because I am reasonably visible online and because my content and methodology facilitates focused speaking practice with fluent English speakers that my time on Skype is universally free.
We all need to survive but, for me, the current hegemony in ELT perpetuates the improverishment of TEFL teachers and the undermining (if not damaging) effects of “free”.
Hugely generous souls who create content for free for others based around a methodology that a) is discredited and has failed to achieve its intended aim for decades (help people to speak comfortably) and b) is meant to be used in a Victorian industrial correctional setting (the classroom) are wasting their time. Especially in the current technological climate.
In my opinion what is needed is a complete re-think on what the oft referred to 2bn English learners really want out of their efforts. The current system is based upon old technology and methodology. It is also based upon supply and demand economics….the scarcity of fluent and native English speaking teachers (or even mere people). It surely will fail in a very large way very soon.
What to replace it? The maths says 2bn learners and 4m TEFL teachers = good business for big established ELT organisitions and publishers using the ELT ‘slave trade’ model at the moment. But that is changing rapidly.
Re-imagine the future on a fully connected basis. 2bn connected learners = 500 learners per teacher. I can think of a business model with a proven methodology that could help every TEFL teacher on the planet earn over £35,000 per annum from predominantly asynchronous (so you aren’t up in the wee small hours all the time) contact with just 80 students; with the learners paying a fraction of what they pay now 🙂
I think, if we get together, we could have ourselves our own ‘little’ revolution.
Jason,
With all do respect to all the good materials you are creating, I think your assumptions are a bit off.
An average salary of £35,000 per annum would attract a flood of teachers to the teaching market marked by under-qualified teachers each who would claim qualifications on the basis of an 8-week TEFL course. This in turn would double, triple, or 4x the number of teachers on the market. Thus greatly reducing your promised share.
But as we know, good teachers aren’t created by 8 week courses; they are molded by their teachers (the students).
There is no single answer and there is also no way to repeal the law of supply and demand.
The real reality is that there soon will be a single market where there once were millions.
Thanks for commenting Michael.
The £35k number was an approximation designed to highlight the fact that there are enough willing learners to support all of the teachers whilst cutting out the ‘middle man’.
I use the word ‘teacher’ for convenience as I think the role of teachers is starting to change and that that it will continue to evolve far quicker than it has in the last 2000 years.
The ability to connect millions of people for free means that those who can organise and support effective learning experiences and provide real irrefutable (video/audio) evidence of their success in helping people to speak English comfortably will be ‘teachers’ although not necessarily certificate carrying members of a qualification system that continues to fail to serve the interests of the majority of English learners globally. It is all tied together nicely. But it will eventually be untied.
Hi Alex, a very timely and thought provoking post. As a publisher of innovative ELT materials that work with free social media in a way that most teachers are unfamiliar with I have always had the “free” thing going round in my head. I give some stuff away and charge for other stuff.
Being active online I always run into people who think that because I am reasonably visible online and because my content and methodology facilitates focused speaking practice with fluent English speakers that my time on Skype is universally free.
We all need to survive but, for me, the current hegemony in ELT perpetuates the improverishment of TEFL teachers and the undermining (if not damaging) effects of “free”.
Hugely generous souls who create content for free for others based around a methodology that a) is discredited and has failed to achieve its intended aim for decades (help people to speak comfortably) and b) is meant to be used in a Victorian industrial correctional setting (the classroom) are wasting their time. Especially in the current technological climate.
In my opinion what is needed is a complete re-think on what the oft referred to 2bn English learners really want out of their efforts. The current system is based upon old technology and methodology. It is also based upon supply and demand economics….the scarcity of fluent and native English speaking teachers (or even mere people). It surely will fail in a very large way very soon.
What to replace it? The maths says 2bn learners and 4m TEFL teachers = good business for big established ELT organisitions and publishers using the ELT ‘slave trade’ model at the moment. But that is changing rapidly.
Re-imagine the future on a fully connected basis. 2bn connected learners = 500 learners per teacher. I can think of a business model with a proven methodology that could help every TEFL teacher on the planet earn over £35,000 per annum from predominantly asynchronous (so you aren’t up in the wee small hours all the time) contact with just 80 students; with the learners paying a fraction of what they pay now 🙂
I think, if we get together, we could have ourselves our own ‘little’ revolution.
Thanks for commenting Michael.
The £35k number was an approximation designed to highlight the fact that there are enough willing learners to support all of the teachers whilst cutting out the ‘middle man’.
I use the word ‘teacher’ for convenience as I think the role of teachers is starting to change and that that it will continue to evolve far quicker than it has in the last 2000 years.
The ability to connect millions of people for free means that those who can organise and support effective learning experiences and provide real irrefutable (video/audio) evidence of their success in helping people to speak English comfortably will be ‘teachers’ although not necessarily certificate carrying members of a qualification system that continues to fail to serve the interests of the majority of English learners globally. It is all tied together nicely. But it will eventually be untied.
A smart person in ELT publishing recently said to me, “We’re not just competing against the other publishers. We’re competing against the free stuff online.” So I’d say you’re all doing pretty well. 🙂
To try and summarise your positions and get back to the topic of the post:
– You don’t have any particular comment on the comparison between published materials and free to access TEFL websites and blogs because you think neither of them are doing much of value (apart from graded readers in Michael’s case)
– Part of the reason why free to access TEFL websites and blogs aren’t as useful as they could be is because they are still following an outdated model the same as the published materials
Is that so? And if so, what could free to access blogs/ sites do that would be more useful?
Hi Alex, pretty much! Everyone is still looking in the wrong place for salvation 🙂 Free to access blogs/websites could be used to build communities of volunteers linked to specific organisers (‘teachers’). I’m working on it…who wants to join me?
I must say Jason, that sounds more like self-publicising than a serious answer to my questions. If you are already doing it, why on earth would tens or hundreds of other blogs/ sites also need to do it? And is that really the only thing that needs doing?
Is self-publicising saying you are trying to do something and others can do it too? Your comment could suggest that someone with ideas asking others to join them is in some way grubby and wrong. Is that how you meant it? People can see and hear what I am up to and they can do it themselves and have me to talk to.
By saying “If you are already doing it….why would other blogs/sites also need to it it?” is, to me, a strange comment. How do ideas spread and movements for change begin? How is the world being changed by technology?
Right, I have a revolution to organise….
You can of course say anything you like, as long as you are reasonably on topic. Anything else is basically spam. As far as that goes, I can’t see how your comments are relevant to my questions (although if I’d been asking about social media like Twitter they could have been). I’ve probably given more publicity to your various campaigns than any other blog/ site on TEFLtastic, but I can’t see how a whole bunch of blogs/ sites could live off that one subject. If your point is that free blogs/ sites should be campaigning more, that would be on topic and something well worth discussing.
Yes, they don’t only need to campaign, highlight the failure of conventional ESL and its control by vested interests, but also to find and them adopt methods of teaching and learning that free both the organisers/activists/teachers and their students from a system that, as you have posted many many times, is to use a common term, not fit for purpose. Where’s the movement going to come from?
Jason,
I think you are probably speaking to a kindred spirit in Alex. And I think you have to remember that we are all moving from a million markets into this great big single one. I am sure no single person has the knowledge of what the singularity will one day look like. But I think we are all united in the belief that teachers should be able to control their own destiny but that there is a danger because big organizations will, in the name of money, attempt to usurp this control.
I think you’re right Michael. Thanks for summing up!
The world is changing from top down hierarchies to much flatter ones and the transmission and application of ideas is becoming much easier. And yes, no one, least of all me, knows where it will end.
But, many practices/industries/professions have been changed for the better of human kind. ELT must be one of the slowest to start. Why?
The fastest to change are industries/organizations built on technology (aviation, computers, warfare). The fact that we are resistant to change suggests that we are built more on relationships between people and less on the interaction between people and machines. I think there is something to be celebrated in this.
Hi Alex,
I am an EFL teacher at a small university in southern Mexico. I started to make my own worksheets a couple of years ago because I wanted to try using real English text (as in news articles) to engage my engineering students in what they were (reluctantly) reading. I download news items that I think are pertinent or thought-provoking and then turn them into various types of worksheets — nowadays sometimes 3-4 worksheets from a single text. I re-use these when appropriate from semester to semester and they have proven to be an invaluable work-saver for me. Searching them out and then turning the articles into usable classroom and homework materials continues to be an enjoyable exercise for me.
I have uploaded several of my lessons to a couple of sites, although not any of my news articles lessons (for copyright reasons) and I do it to see if what works for me is of any interest or use to other teachers.
I also have downloaded free materials from a number of sites, but have found that the quality of free downloads in general leaves something to be desired. I don’t download from free sites much anymore as I generally have to put as much time into ‘fixing’ these materials as it would take me to create my own.
At present, I am considering what I will do in retirement in a few years and one of the things I would really like to do is get into materials creation and publishing, either print or digital. Downloading my original lessons to free sites is a way for me to gain experience.
As for the digital frontier and how it will affect classrooms, teachers and students: when you teach in a developing country, the digital frontier is a very long way off. I help to run teacher training courses each summer for people who speak little or no English but have drawn the short straw in their schools, do not have sufficient or any books or must use poorly-written books and are still writing on chalkboards. Online classes? MOOCs? Electronic learning platforms? Largely irrelevant to teachers with little or no training and no resources, financial or otherwise, to teach with. Maybe I should start a blog for revolutionary low-tech techniques for teaching in those many parts of the world with no access to the digital frontier.
I know you’ve accused me of self-promotion earlier in this thread by by writing this,
“To be honest, I think the best thing we could do is write in the teachers’ L1. Other things taking that kind of situation into account would include providing our ideas as printable ebooks, simplifying our English, providing videos demonstrating techniques and activities, providing lesson plans and detailed answer keys, etc – none of which I must admit I do myself due to the sheer tedium!”
..you just just described English Out There teaching and learning materials.
Carol, have you thought about using internet cafes?
I’ve just about described most materials you have to pay for, which is also the case for your EOT stuff – and therefore you are either off topic again or on the other side of this comparison between free online stuff and published stuff you have to pay for (which you probably are anyway, as I seem to remember you produced an actual published course). The exception is the materials in teachers’ L1 – neither you nor international publishers produce much or anything in, say, Japanese for Japanese teachers of English.
People having to resort to internet cafes is a good point, and another reason why free blogs/ sites should probably provide our materials and ideas in multi-page packages of pdfs that are easy to save and print. I’ve planned to do that for ages on my blog, e.g. have all my Past Continuous worksheets in one pdf, but I doubt that I will actually get round to it – again because this is basically a hobby and it’s always more motivating just to post new stuff.
PS, I rather expected to meet you again on this post which your experience really is linked to Jason:
http://www.appsforlanguages.com/elt-dips-its-toe-into-the-crowdfunding-pool/
Jason, I have internet access in my office at the university. The teachers I was talking about without internet access are the Mexican teachers of English in small towns and villages which not only do not have internet access, they don’t have cell phone coverage. One of my colleagues built a home in a village about 2 hours from here which not only does not have internet or cell phone access, but only has one land-line in the entire village! These folks and their children are nowhere near the digital frontier.
Another major problem that Mexican teachers of English have is that the federal dept of education produced in-house the English textbooks that must be used by public school teachers here. By all accounts, they are awful, riddled with errors and with no logic to their methodology at all. Apparently, it was cheaper to produce these materials (none of which was ever seen or edited by a native English speaker) in-house than it was to purchase textbooks from the established publishers. At least the Thai government, when I taught there, was using recognized EFT textbooks.
Again, the situation in Japan is more similar than you might think, with terrible locally produced textbooks in all state schools. I’d also extend my previous comment about primary school teachers and say that the vast majority of junior high school and even high school teachers would only consider reading teaching ideas that were written in Japanese.
The internet access thing is of course very different here, although in common with many developing countries the majority of views of website pages has long been via mobile phone in Japan. I still think free and easily printable e books, preferably with at least some help such as translation of important terms into L1, would be the way to go if you wanted to really have an impact on the world. You’d then need to go out and do the other thing I can’t be bothered to do, which is publicise it via teachers’ groups, Facebook, teaching conferences, etc etc.
You wrote,
“The exception is the materials in teachers’ L1 – neither you nor international publishers produce much or anything in, say, Japanese for Japanese teachers of English.”
In Japanese for Japanese teachers, eh?
http://englishoutthere.com/japanese-teacher-courses/teach-elementary-course-japanese
I saw the crowdfunding piece and because that experiment is on-going (don’t think I gave up) I thought I’d keep my own counsel. Hard to believe I know, but it’s the truth.
Jason, I wrote “Japanese for Japanese teachers of English”
Yup! The instructions throughout the course are in Japanese and English so that Japanese English teachers can teach English with it. Or am I missing something?
My mistake, I quickly misread whilst remembering you used to be Languages Out There and I thought it was a course for teaching Japanese. Still not free, but the success or not of this could tell us something about what I was saying about needing to use teachers’ L1 but the difficulty of then publicising it.
Great! Pushing the publishers to produce better stuff is certainly an aim worth having too!
Hi Carol
I must say my experience with free online materials is similar to yours, which is one reason I asked the question. However, nowdays I also have to spend so much time adapting stuff from books to be suitable for my classes that most of time I might as well have started from zero or just the germ of the idea and written my own stuff. In fact, the same is true even of my own old worksheets. That’s why I boiled the question down to the hopefully realistic and worthwhile comparison between published materials and free online ones (and the same question for teaching ideas, though most people including myself have concentrated on materials). How would you say we are doing in those terms?
I think you are absolutely right that there are markets that most free online blogs/ sites aren’t hitting at all, including primary school teachers here in Japan. To be honest, I think the best thing we could do is write in the teachers’ L1. Other things taking that kind of situation into account would include providing our ideas as printable ebooks, simplifying our English, providing videos demonstrating techniques and activities, providing lesson plans and detailed answer keys, etc – none of which I must admit I do myself due to the sheer tedium! Those still leave the problems of lack of internet access and our probable difficulties knowing how to “sell” our ideas/ materials in those markets, to which the partial answers would be providing mobile-accessible ideas/ materials and using social media in the teachers’ L1 in the hope that one or two people will discover our stuff, print it out, and spread the word on paper.
I’ve just about described most materials you have to pay for, which is also the case for your EOT stuff – and therefore you are either off topic again or on the other side of this comparison between free online stuff and published stuff you have to pay for (which you probably are anyway, as I seem to remember you produced an actual published course). The exception is the materials in teachers’ L1 – neither you nor international publishers produce much or anything in, say, Japanese for Japanese teachers of English.
People having to resort to internet cafes is a good point, and another reason why free blogs/ sites should probably provide our materials and ideas in multi-page packages of pdfs that are easy to save and print. I’ve planned to do that for ages on my blog, e.g. have all my Past Continuous worksheets in one pdf, but I doubt that I will actually get round to it – again because this is basically a hobby and it’s always more motivating just to post new stuff.
I am really intrigued by this conversation about how to localize teaching materials. How many of you have gone into local teachers classrooms and watched what they do over an extended period of time? How might this kind of opportunity change or not change your perception?
After years spent watching native or near native speakers teach English I can count the time spent in English-challenged non-native speakers’ classrooms on two hands and one foot.
I haven’t spent any time watching non-native teachers teach English. My experience, albeit second-hand, comes from the teachers’ course my dept runs every summer and talking to their former students who end up in my classes at university. In many public schools in Mexico nobody is qualified to teach English. Instead, they draw straws (maybe literally in some cases) and short straw has to teach English for a year or two. It is invariably taught in Spanish and is limited to grammar and/or reading depending on the individual teacher’s preference or comfort level.
An additional problem in Mexico is that many of our students speak Spanish as a second language. There are still around 40 indigenous languages in active use, so children from the villages do not even hear Spanish until they get to primary school. Thus when they are exposed to English, they are not yet fluent in Spanish. And no, even though it is received wisdom that children can learn new languages more easily than adults, these kids manage to learn both Spanish and English badly while not retaining fluency in their first language. It’s really sad, especially since with competent teaching and resources, these kids could be tri-lingual by the time they finish high school…Oh yes, I have also been told by my students that writing in Spanish is only taught in primary or middle school, never in the public high schools, so my students arrive at university unable to write grammatically or coherently in Spanish, which means that when they hit the English program they are completely at sea when it comes to writing in English. Makes for a challenging job.
Alex, to get back to your original question about the value of free online materials vs published materials, I think that many, if not most, Mexican teachers of English are unaware of the existence of free Internet EFT materials and their English proficiency may be weak enough that they are unable to do web searches in English, even if they have Internet access.
One of the things I make it a point to do is provide links to free online materials sites whenever I make a presentation to teachers. So the Mexican teachers of English are stuck with the materials provided by the govt which are poor and not aware of, so unable to use, the free online materials they could use.
Thanks for getting us back on topic, Carol! Would I be right in guessing that they are also probably completely unaware of the materials of the international ELT publishers and paid sites like onestopenglish? If so, with the help of people like you we are probably doing okay in comparison. Perhaps rather than providing materials in teachers’ many languages, we could have sites that described materials elsewhere in teachers’ L1 and so also make them more searchable. One of the biggest referrers to my site is a French version of that:
http://www.michellehenry.fr
Sorry for reanimating a dead thread, but I’ve been pondering how we are doing and how to do better further and would still like to hear more from other people. Some random observations:
eltjam has done something very important if you want to your spread your ideas which again I can’t be bothered to do. It’s definitely worth having your own address (somethingsomething.com or .co.uk) rather than using a generic .wordpress.com one. As well as boosting search rankings, some schools and even whole countries block blogs on blogging platform addresses.
I’ve recently proved to myself that my (free to access) online articles and worksheets are the same quality as the ones I’ve had published on paper, by having things I wrote for the former purposes accepted by well-known TEFL magazines. However, the only times I’ve noticed my articles being referenced it has always been my stuff on paper.
Jason’s approach of allowing people to make money out of your ideas seems probably the best way of spreading them, so I’m thinking about dropping one of the only two restrictions I put on use of my materials and letting people include them in things they charge people for (as long as they keep to the last remaining restriction and say where they come from).