I gave my three technology talks and attended one given by Susan Gaer. I observed the teachers and asked some direct questions…and these are the results:

Unsurprisingly, all but two teachers had cellphones….and almost all had digital cameras or had access to them. Out of a group of 30, about 10 had i-pods. I didn’t find this unusual…some of the teachers were relatively young and a few around my age…(those of us who remembered teaching with cassette taperecorders).

In my plenary, I had around 200 attendees. I asked how many used google and most said they did. Around 60% used Wikipedia, but from their reactions I could tell many didn’t trust it. Around 50% had read a blog and, interestingly enough, 10 had their own blogs.

Now, from my research for the talk, I know the Dominican Republic is not really typical. According to Internet World Stats (http://www.internetworldstats.com/stats.htm), 23% of the world’s population uses the Internet, but 31.6% of the population of the Dominican Republic uses it. This was as surprising to the attendees as it was to me. Many had said (as some teachers always do in my tech talks) that no one could get online, that it was just too difficult..although they admitted there were cybercafes all over and they charged less than a dollar an hour (just like I’ve found in Mexico).

So…what’s my conclusion…I really can’t say. I’ll be giving “tech” talks in Colombia and Chile this summer and in Mexico in the fall, so I guess I just continue my informal investigation….

Any comments?

I’m writing this from Santo Domingo…a very nice place. However, here come my doubts. More and more schools and organizations are planning events dealing with technology and teachers attending the events seem to come to the “techy” talks, but how many of these teachers will really use what they see? Not because they don’t want to, but rather because the speakers are assuming a much higher level of technical knowledge than the teachers have.

I hope I’m wrong, but I really don’t think most classroom teachers use technology much beyond the level of checking email and making calls on their cellphones. (Just to be clear, I usually give my technology talks in Mexico, but I have given them in other Latin American countries.)

I must admit, I have noted changes in the last few years. Around two years ago I was surprised when I asked a group of middle school teachers outside of the Federal District in Mexico if they had email addresses—they all did.

Recently I have asked attendees if their schools have Interactive White Boards (IWB)…very few do. When I ask if they use the Internet, most raise their hands and when I ask if they have read a blog, maybe 75% have. However, if I ask if they have a blog (even if they write in it as irregularly as I do), I only get one or two hands raised.

I plan to ask participants here in Santo Domingo how much they use different kinds of technology in their classes. I’ll report back on the results on Friday.

I was disappointed though…just like so many facets of language teaching and assessment, very little has been done theoretically in oral testing. I’d previously found the same issue when investigating communicative testing. Everyone seems to think they have the best way to do things, but no one can justify why.

Apparently a lot was done in the 80s on oral testing and most of the specific references in the book refer to these articles. However, from what I read I gather many of the results are questionable.

This leaves me, a non-theoretician, no place to turn for suggestions on how to include valid techniques in my exams.

The exams I recommend are done as pair-work and between the teacher and the student. This apparently isn’t bad (whew…) . However, I find it difficult to relate the needs and financial possibilities of a school looking for an assessment instrument that is not only easy to write and administer to a large number of students, but that is also inexpensive to create. The Fulcher book has an interesting discussion of the financial burden incurred when devising an oral testing instrument for a high-stakes, proficiency exam at a school.  Incredibly he estimates (and supports the estimate) it would cost almost 63,000 pounds to do one cycle of the exam. This, of course, is beyond the possibilities of most language schools.

An oral exam, when developed by a school for use for its students must include the following:
1. It must be transparent and have face validity both for the teachers and for the students taking it. It must seem to reflect what has been done in class.
2. It must be possible for the teachers (often untrained in test writing techniques) to be able to produce alternate versions of the exam so it can be used more than once.
3. It must be easy to give and involve a minimum of class time. The teacher, who will often administer the exam and rate it alone, has to be able to test up to 30 students in a 50-minute period.
4. The rating scale has to be transparent and easy to use. It also must be compatible with the grading system used by the institution.
5. Finally, the total financial investment must be reasonable. An oral exam is almost always just one aspect of the student’s final grade and usually represents a small percentage of it. Schools are not willing to dedicate either excessive time or money to the development of an oral exam.

Now, this doesn’t mean the schools don’t want a valid test instrument. It only means they can’t spend either the time or money to develop one and adapting an instrument that was developed for a different purpose is disastrous.

So, what am I recommending. I am asking researchers to investigate realistic, inexpensive testing methods that are valid and that can be used in small-scale situations. Most investigation is dedicated to large-scale testing situations which in reality represent but a small part of all the exams that are given every day.

We used a textbook that had been written at the school in the 1950s and that was still very popular throughout Mexico. Each unit was the same, beginning with a series of sentences containing the grammar structure being taught in the unit. Supposedly the teacher was supposed to model the sentences and the student repeat them chorally. (Just to make it “fun”, we sometimes had the class repeat in groups of men and women or by sides of the classroom and sometimes we let individuals repeat.

The next pages were dedicated to a grammar explanation with examples and then substitution drills. In these sections the teacher said the model sentence: John has a ball and the cue: You. Students were to make the transformation in chorus: You have a ball. This was done even with structures where there was no morphological or syntactical changes: Peter is more intelligent than Paul. (studious) –> Peter is more studious than Paul. After the repetition exercises, students dedicated themselves to written exercises, often of a similar repetitive nature. (My Mexican husband once turned in his homework by doing one or two of the items in each exercise and writing “ditto” for the rest.)

The theoretical logic behind all this repetition was that students had to repeat a sentence many times to learn it. In fact, memorization was considered to be the “maximum”. It was all based on B. F. Skinner’s studies of stimulus and response. The teacher gave the stimulus (the model or cue) and the students responded.

In this model there was no space for creativity. Vocabulary was limited and all emphasis was on structure and pronunciation….Yes, it was VERY BORING, for the students and especially for the teachers who taught 6 or 7 50-minute classes every day.

I must admit that many teachers liked the boredom. Two of our older male teacher were infamous at school. One of them used to give the students written work and sit back and read the newspaper. Another would sneak out and go call his myriad girlfriends on the phone (he was over 60 ….and married, if I remember well)

This boredom led me to one of the most creative periods of my life. Many of us had no faith in the Audio Lingual method so we started using what was called “the Eclectic Method”. What was the Eclectic Method? Basically it meant doing what you enjoyed doing and what you, as the teacher, felt helped the students learn. We started inventing and sharing in fun activities and games. We made posters, cards and cut pictures out of magazines (the activities I mentioned in my second Blog came from this epoch). None of the activities would be considered “communicative” nowadays. Most work was Teacher-Student, but we did begin having students work in groups, even if the activities were very controlled. “Free conversation” was the only open activity we did and it was relegated to Fridays when we were just too tired to teach or for when we substituted classes and had no idea what to do.

Teaching/Learning has changed a lot in 30 years. Students are now more responsible for what they learn and the teacher’s role has changed from the audio-lingual “orchestra conductor” to the modern facilitator, but I often wonder if that “rush” of creativity we felt from around 1977-1979 (when communicative teaching was born at our school) still exists or if the plethora of material now available (in texts, resource books and online) has perhaps limited the creative process and rendered it dormant.

Materials: A large sheet of paper. (Big enough for everyone to see from their seats.) Color markers.
Preparation: Draw a grid on the sheet, either 3×4 or 4×4. In the top three/four boxes either draw (or paste magazine photos) three/four different people (could be family members), one per box. Outline each box with a different color. In the bottom boxes, draw (or paste photos) different activities/belonging (for have)/occupations (for be). You can even add a clock for time relation. Outline each box with the color that represents the person in the upper boxes who is related to the activity/belonging/occupation.
In class: Put the AV on the wall and be sure students know the vocabulary involved. Then, in groups they can make sentences about the people and their activities or ask each others questions about each one.

(2) The Lady or the Dragon. We used this game to review any structure. Basically it is just an artifice for any two-team game. Instead of just counting points, you use the drawing. It might seem very childish, but adults and adolescents enjoyed it.

Preparation: Draw a princess tied to a stake with 4-6 ropes visible on one side of the board. Draw a horrible dragon on the other side. Draw 4-6 (the same number as the ropes) ocean waves between them.
The game: Form two teams. One team is the princess and one is the dragon. When the princess team gets a point, erase one of the ropes. When the dragon gets a point, erase a wave. The princess team wins when there are no more ropes and the princess escapes. The dragon team wins when there are no more waves and the dragon eats the princess.

I can’t say I continued in EFL from that course onward. I didn’t. I went to the University of Wisconsin to continue my Spanish studies for a few years and I taught Spanish (a good experience, being a non-native language teacher, but more about that in the future). Little by little I found myself studying fewer literature courses and more linguistics, and then I started a minor in English. When it came time to do my dissertation, I knew I’d be returning to Mexico sooner or later. My thesis director was into dialects and wanted me to describe a Mexican dialect, but that topic just didn’t seem to be “me”.

I returned to Mexico and began an 18-year stint teaching and coordinating at the Binational Center in Mexico City (Instituto Mexicano Norteamericano de Relaciones Culturales on Hamburgo St.) I abandoned my dissertation, becoming a permanent ABD (All But Dissertation). When the Institute closed, I moved on to a multi-campus private university and after teaching a year, I became Institutional English Coordinator and helped organize English language programs at some 15 campuses throughout Mexico. I quit a few years ago and have dedicated myself to materials writing for the Macmillan Company.

During the time I was teaching, gave many talks both at our local MEXTESOL affiliate conventions and TESOL conventions, I edited the MEXTESOL Journal for some seven years and a few years ago I was elected to the Board of Directors of TESOL (I’m in my final year of service right now).

In the future, I plan to write about my experiences and give hints for classroom activities. I have specialized in teacher training, on-line teaching activities and assessment and I imagine these will be some of the topics I’ll hit upon.

I’d welcome any comments or suggestions.