One of the things that I keep coming back to with this whole teaching unplugged thing is collecting and giving feedback. I don't feel like I do it particularly well or regulary.
I watched this the other night about some people unplugging their CELTA intial teacher training course. It does take an hour to watch but it was fascinating for all sorts of reasons! I'd love to go on some kind of two day CELTA update course along those lines... with regards to feedback (which starts about 26 minutes in) I loved how they listened to their trainees and demoed giving feedback on their language before asking them to listen to their learners and helping them give feedback in the same way to their learners.
The other thing that struck me about feedback recently was what Cecilia Cohelo said here about words and their power. What struck me in particular was the examples she gave of comments e.g. we often respond to learners with
“Great!” “Perfect!” “Good job!” instead of really listening and personalising the comment e.g. “Great! I also like going to the beach on my holidays Julia!” or “Yes! And what was the last film you’ve watched Lucas?”.
Both these kinds of feedback - the form focused and the content focused require that I really listen to my learners and I find that quite challenging. However, one of the things I like about the whole unplugged approach is it does seem to free up a lot of time to do this. So I'm going to make an effort to begin regularly giving my learners feedback that is genuinely helpful and affirming not just a surface response that maintains rapport without any real substance.
keep us posted as to how it goes - so important but not so easy!
Posted by: Naomishema | 02/14/2011 at 08:43 PM
Thanks :-) will try!
Posted by: Anna Rose | 02/14/2011 at 10:46 PM