Common European Framework of Reference for Languages - Too common for ESP?

You've all heard of the Common European Framework of Reference for Languages (CEFR) or at least seen those A1, A2, B1, B2, C1, C2 on the cover of language coursebooks and exam brochures, right? If you haven't, don't worry, the CEFR will get to you eventually. Unintentionally perhaps, it's little by little realizing Pinky and the Brain's lifelong dream: to take over the world.

 (Source: retro.mmgn.com)

We're all too aware of the advantages of CEFR: for one, it provides a common language for us to talk about language levels. I may not speak a word of German, but if a Fräulein says she's a B2 in the language of Goethe, I'll know what she means. I'll know what she's capable of in a General German context.

However,
(not enough, let me make it bigger)

HOWEVER, 
(now that's better)

what is the role of the CEFR in contexts of Language for Specific Purposes (LSP)? Should it have a role at all? 


My go-to response for anything in life (just ask my poor husband) is "NO". That's why the moment I heard Aviation English course sellers refer to the CEFR, my mind pretty much shut down as if they were Charlie Brown's teacher.

Seriously, you're talking gibberish.

Because, no matter how carefully designed the CEFR was, it still has a single purpose: "to explore the communicative needs of adult migrants and to guide the assessment of their proficiency in the language of their host community." (Council of Europe, a.k.a. horse's mouth) And you can't just cross the ocean on a state-of-the-art fighter.

Or that's what I thought until I attended the TESOL International Academy on ESP (BTW, I strongly recommend both the Academy and the Association itself). The speakers there represented the crème de la crème in terms of ESP practitioners, and they did it beautifully. It was serious, principled ESP they were reporting. And yet they'd still talk about the CEFR as a backbone of their courses. Whatever ESP they were in, whatever the background of the presenter, there they were: speaking of their A1-C2 levels.

One of the things we do when we carry out a needs analysis is, of course, list the tasks involving language in that domain. CEFR tasks are those of an adult migrant. May there be a considerable overlap? Well, there might be. In Aviation I seriously doubt it. But in tourism, business or other fields, it might perhaps be possible to map the domain you are working with onto the CEFR. Provided that you set out and do it, actually study how the construct behind the European framework relates to your specific domain, I'd be OK with it, if a bit suspicious at first (ok, very suspicious at first, but I'm a nobody, so don't worry about me). On the other hand, if you just assume the CEFR fits the bill no-questions-asked, aren't you paying lip service to the need of needs analysis?

(Yeah, I'm being controversial. Go ahead, shoot!)

Unreal TV

Hat tip: Upworthy

These ads, which have been recorded for a fundraising campaign for public TV in the U.S., mock reality TV and may serve as a springboard for debate in the English language classroom.

For more commercials like these, go to the campaign website. 

 If you want to use them in a conversation class, here are a few suggestions:

• Lead-in:
• Pair Ss up to talk about the questions:
  a) What are your favorite TV shows? Why do you like them? (If you don't like TV, why don't you?)
  b) How do you (or people you know) choose new TV shows to watch? 

Or... 

• Give each S 3 blank slips of paper. On each slip they will write a name of a TV show. One of the slips will have the name of their favorite TV show; the other will be the name of a TV show they can't stand and the last one the name of a TV show they like but can live without.
• Pair Ss up. Ss will have to read the 3 slips their partner wrote and find out which is which (which is their partner's favorite, which is the one they can't stand, etc). But they can't ask that straight ahead of course! They have to ask other questions to try and suss it out. 

Or...

• Ask Ss to write the names of their 2 favorite TV shows and 2 TV shows they can't stand.
• Ss mingle to find someone who is very similar to them and sit next to their "TV soulmates".

• Listening/Viewing for gist: 
• Tell Ss they are going to see two TV commercials to identify what they are advertising and what they have in common.
• Show two of the commercials and stop right before the white titles in the black background. Ask them to pair check and elicit their answers. (Key: Both advertise reality shows. There are a lot of things in common: both show recorded scenes of the program; both finish by saying the date and time of the show, etc.)
• Ss chat in pairs: Would you like to watch those shows? Why (not)? Do you think these shows would be successful in your country? Why (not)?"

• Reading/Viewing for inference: 
• Show the end of the commercials. With a new partner, Ss have to come up with what they think these commercials were used for.
• After you have collected a few ideas, tell Ss this is a fundraising campaign for public TV. Ask Ss if they think the campaign is going to be successful.

• Debate: 
• Preparation: Divide your class in 2 groups. Tell a group to list arguments in favor of reality shows, while the other group lists arguments against them. 
• 1st round: Get 2 students from each group, making groups of 4 to discuss the future of reality TV. (If you have a strong group, you can spice things up by asking Ss to argue for the opposite position, not the one they prepared for.)
• Collect and give feedback. 
• 2nd round: Change groups. Ss will have to discuss again, now standing up for what they believe in. (You may want to ask Ss to sort themselves into people who are actually pro and against reality TV so you can mix them for this stage.)

• Wrap-up:
• Show the end of the commercial again and draw attention to the tag #TVgonewrong. Ask them if they agree with it.

• Possible follow-ups:
• In groups Ss come up with another reality show spoof and sell their idea to their classmates.
• If they really got into the campaign, Ss can go online to find out how much money the campaign has raised so far and see the other ads.
• Ask Ss if they believe reality shows are "really real". Refer Ss to this On the Media podcast about the subject.

Would you use these ads in class? How? :D

Whose meaning is it anyway?

"What's the meaning of..." seems to be a perfectly innocent question. But language is never innocent, is it? 

I give you exhibit A: white-shoe

According to The American Heritage,

"white-shoe adj. Of or being a long-established business known for reputable service and a wealthy clientele: “took a job at... [a] pronouncedly white-shoe investment-banking firm” (Connie Bruck)"

 The Shorter Oxford English Dictionary, however, defines it as:

"US denoting a company (esp. a law firm) owned and run by white upper-class Americans and typically regarded as cautious and conservative"

And now exhibit B: bleeding heart

The American Heritage considers a bleeding heart to be "a person who is considered excessively sympathetic toward those who claim to be underprivileged or exploited," while their counterpart to the North, the Canadian Oxford Dictionary, glosses the expression as an informal term to "a person perceived as overly sentimental, esp. in regard to social problems."

My husband, who in my unbiased opinion just happens to be the best English-to-Portuguese translator in the world, was the one who brought these different definitions to my attention. To us, these are without a doubt blatant pieces of evidence of how ideology(ies) influence(s) the product of a reference work... And of ideology in language.

If languages are ideological, it follows that teaching one is necessarily so. That is why, of all the acronyms in TESOL, my least favorite one is certainly "PARSNIP". Each letter stands for an allegedly forbidden topic in the EFL classroom: politics, alcohol, religion, sex, narcotics, isms (e.g.: feminism, socialism), and pork. Of course there are topics wise and sensitive teachers would avoid for certain groups, but the idea that language teaching can be at all "neutral" or "sanitized" has always baffled me. It is language, after all. And it is teaching. Neutrality is the opposite of what we set out to do.

But perhaps this is just the opinion of a bleeding heart on white-shoe establishments.

Related posts:

Scott Thornbury on Taboo in ELT

Macmillan Dictionary Blog on the sexist uses of the word "simpering" 

What's up

A long hiatus in terms of blogging, but definitely not in terms of teaching...

BRAZ-TESOL, the Brazilian Association of Teachers of English as a Second Language, published my first blog post as an article in their latest newsletter. =) Really, really happy.

Also, I am about to finish an intensive CELTA, and boy, is that intense! :) On the other hand, the tutors were very supportive and my CELTA trainee team was truly a Team with capital T, so this has made the course a little easier to cope with. I'm certainly one who gets "by with a little help from my friends."  (So thank you, Sharon, Filipe, Sara, and Alini!) 

In fact, it wasn't as hard as I expected it to be, but only because I thought it'd be nearly impossible. ;-) It still meant sleep deprivation and no days off, though. And I have been in teaching for a while. I can't imagine what the intensive CELTA is like for inexperienced teachers, who Cambridge says is the CELTA's target audience! 0.o

I don't know what my score will be yet, but I've already got something much more important. Learning, of course. New friends, without a shadow of a doubt. Plus, a lot of heartfelt thank yous. For example, after I finished my last lesson, in which I worked with the song "Que Sera, Sera", students simply wouldn't leave the room. One of the students who lingered, a smiley 72-year-old, hugged me and said, "your lesson made me happy." 

Now, what in the world could top that? :D

Lie to Me

(Hat tip: Nadhir Moghli.)

As a teacher, are you average, better than average or below average?

A survey of college professors at the University of Nebraska found that nearly 100% of the teaching staff thought they were "above average" as teachers, according to this 2006 article. A mathematical impossibility. If there is an average, most of them should be around it, not above it. 

The article discusses how self-assessment can be flawed*, but what I wish to focus on here is a different matter.

"Average, below average, above average teacher"? Those terms presuppose a comparison or even a competition among teachers! 

Why should we be going against each other? There are perhaps instances when it may be necessary for management to choose a teacher over the other (promotions and bonuses spring to mind), but for most intents and purposes, doesn't it make sense for a school to want as many effective teachers as possible? Wouldn't a reality of 50% of average teachers -- with a few the worse, and a few the better -- be bleak and saddening for us all?

Is this how you see your teacher's lounge? 

(Source: TABMathletics)

Instead of comparing a teacher against the whole teaching staff in a norm-referenced approach to teacher evaluation, it would be a lot more interesting to adopt a criterion-referenced approach, i.e. to agree upon a set of criteria to assess teaching ability and then evaluate teachers -- via self-assessment or any other form -- against those criteria. In other words, dropping the idea of average for the concept of standard (below standard, up to standard, above standard). After all, I could be the "best" teacher in a group of ineffective teachers and still be ineffective. And the opposite is also possible: I may be the "worst" teacher in a group of super teachers and feel terrible about myself, when in fact I am an overall effective teacher with huge potential for improvement.

In short, numbers lie. Especially averages. And when it comes to teacher evaluation, it is in the interest of the students that we try and be as fair as possible in depicting the reality of their education.

I'd love to know your opinion on this. How do you think teacher evaluation should be conducted?




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*In all fairness, the article ends with what I believe is a great message: "When we accept the proposition that we’re not as good as we think, we’re already considerably better than we were." I wholeheartedly agree with the author in terms of how perception can skew our judgment, how we shouldn't see teaching as a single-trait competence, and above all how we must be committed to constant professional development. What I don't buy is the idea that we should be averaging teachers.