Mobile phones in the classroom? The answer is yes!

Once upon a time, I hated it when students brought their cellphones to class. Ten years ago, if students brought their phones to class, it was only for two reasons: a) because they were scared of their manager and had a difficult job where they needed to be available all the time, whether they wanted to be or not; or, more likely b) because they really believed that a call from Mamá, saying, "Buy bread!" was more important than class time was.

Things have changed. First of all, not many companies are offering free classes to their students anymore. People who didn't behave themselves in classes have not been given more classes. (There's an economic crisis, dammit!) The best reason, though, is because phones can do so much more than they could in 2001. As a result, I want to learn some new things, too, especially how to welcome phones into the classroom. Here are three reasons to keep that phone on while you're learning.

Don't write it down - take a photo! Even the cheapest mobile phone now has a decent camera on it. If you find it hard to take notes AND take part in the class at the same time, use the camera on your phone to record what's being written on the board. (I do this a lot when we have a class with a lot of grammar, and there's something I want to remember.)

Keep track of your homework assignments and exam dates with a notes application. I use Evernote because I can link it in with Gmail, and it can use the camera's capabilities

Use an online dictionary like Dictionary.com, instead of a paper dictionary. I'm not sure if Oxford has any plans to release a free app of any of their dictionaries (wouldn't it be great to have the Advanced Learner's Dictionary for free on your iPhone and save €45?) but you can get Dictionary.com for free, and I'm sure that there are probably many other reference books available through Android and iPhone (I've got a Blackberry, which has lots of good stuff but not any of the big publishers. Not for free, anyway.)

Before I forget, the Oxford Advanced Learner's Dictionary is now available, totally free, through the Oxford University Press website.

Obviously, there are some things you still shouldn't do with a phone. You won't be permitted to bring any kind of telephone into an official exam, such as First or TOEFL, and it would be very unwise to do that with a school exam. Turn the settings to SILENT so that you don't disturb anyone, don't take phone calls in class (if you need to take a phone call, let your teacher know before class starts and be subtle about learning) and be careful how much texting you do in class. After all, you ARE in class for a reason!

How do YOU learn?

Don't panic - that's not an existential question, I promise!

When you become a teacher, one of the most difficult things to learn is that everybody learns a different way. Activities, games and ideas that worked in one class may fail spectacularly in another class. Or maybe you'll find a way to make them more relevant and interesting.

This is especially true if students are aware of their learning styles. Not everyone learns the same way; not every trick and every piece of advice works equally well for everyone! I'm not an expert on the topic, so I won't talk in detail about the theory, but if you'd like to learn more - or even if you'd just like to get an idea of what your strengths are - take a look at the link below. The language is a little advanced, but it's worth the trouble.

http://www.businessballs.com/kolblearningstyles.htm

Why studying doesn't work.

"I have to study more."

How many times do you hear yourself saying that? How much studying do you actually do during the academic year?

Instead of studying, think about practice. Why? First of all, most people say that they feel that they should study.... but they actually don't do anything at all. Maybe they buy some books or maybe they have lists of vocabulary, but I'll tell you from experience - 90% of students don't even go that far.

Can you imagine what would happen if Alberto Contador wanted to win the Tour de France, but never got on his bicycle? Or if Cristiano Ronaldo wanted to win the World Cup for Portugal, but never put his shoes on? If you say that you want to study, but you don't do anything, all you do is guarantee that you will fail.

Here's an easier idea: Don't study - practice. Use your English every way you can. Listen to music. Write a journal. Watch short videos on YouTube. After all, you're learning English so that you can use it in the real world. The best way to use it in real situations is to practice in controlled situations, and to make it as diverse as possible.

If you think this advice is ridiculous, read this article from The New York Times: http://tinyurl.com/353qvzo.

Remember: You are the boss of your learning. Teachers are there to help you, but they cannot do your work for you.

If you're looking for a private teacher....

So here we are, in the middle of August. Within the next few days, as people start returning from holidays, many potential English students are going to start looking for English classes. A lot of people will choose to attend classes in an academy. Many will start looking for private English teachers, either for work or for fun. In most cases, the relationship between teachers and students will generally be pretty positive.

That said, every year, there are cases where one side, or the other, ends up disappointed. A lack of communication can prevent students from getting the help they need, and it can also prevent teachers from really understanding how they can work effectively with their students.

I'm not going to say that I'm an expert on student-teacher relationships. I have, however, taught for twelve years in different countries, and I hope that the information I can offer you will help you find and work with the teacher who's best for you.

THOUGHTS FOR STUDENTS:

Be honest with yourself before you're honest with your teacher. If you're going to hire a private teacher, be aware that you are helping provide someone with a salary. Who are the students who give up after three weeks? They're the students who do not have a clear idea of what they want to accomplish, or what they want to do, BEFORE the class.

Sit down with yourself for an hour and ask yourself the following questions:
- What are the things I currently do with my level of English?
-What are the things I cannot do, but either need or want to do?
- What are the things I need to do to bring my level up?
- How much time per week -- in AND out of class - am I willing to dedicate to working on my English? (Remember that, for every hour you spend in class, you need to spend an hour practising and working on your skills.)
- Do I really need English for my job, or do I say that because I think everyone else expects me to have English skills?
- What are the fun things that I can do that will keep me interested in English?

If you cannot answer those questions, please think twice before you contact a private teacher. Classes in a group situation in an academy may be a better option, because it's sometimes more fun to learn with other people than to learn alone.

Don't be cheap. If you want to have classes with a teacher but you think the teacher is too expensive, it's acceptable to negotiate. It is NOT acceptable to send the teacher insulting e-mails or to ask for the price of classes to be cut by half. You wouldn't ask your lawyer to lower his fees. You wouldn't ask your accountant to lower her fees. You wouldn't ask your dentist to lower his fees. It's not acceptable to do that with a teacher. I'm sorry if this sounds rude, but if you cannot afford a teacher's fees...look somewhere else for a different teacher.

One side note to that: If you're employed full-time want to take private English classes, and you're worried about the cost, ask your Human Resources department if the company has a student payment program. A surprising number of companies in Spain DO reimburse employees (=pay them back) for part of the cost of classes; they usually do this if the teacher is an autónomo and can issue invoices. It doesn't hurt to ask your company if they do this; and, if it's not company policy, ask your boss(es) to consider doing it. (Remind them that reimbursing is a LOT less expensive than hiring a company to give in-house classes.)

Remember that the teacher is trying to create lessons and tasks to help you improve. (What I basically mean is: Learn to follow instructions.) If I give you a writing task, I don't want you to spend half an hour telling me the answer. If I give you a grammar exercise that asks you to write the answer in complete sentences, don't give me two or three words. You may think that it's boring to do all that work, but that work is what makes you get better. Please do the work as it's presented to you, not as you think that you want to do it. I can't tell the difference between a student who doesn't understand a task and a student who simply doesn't feel like doing the work.

If you want to terminate your relationship with your teacher, be honest about it. Don't disappear. Attend your classes and let us know at the earliest moment if you can't attend. If you have a personal issue, like illness or family or money problems, be honest about it. Don't cancel eight classes in a row and then expect your teacher to help you four months later. Don't "forget" to pay your teacher for a month and expect the teacher not to notice.

THOUGHTS FOR TEACHERS:

Learning a language is scary. If you've never done it before, you should try it; it can be enriching and humbling at the same time. We have more credibility as teachers if we've been there before ourselves.

Don't sell yourself short. Don't work for less money than you think you rightly deserve. If the student doesn't want to pay what you're asking, let him or her find someone else. If you have a specialized skill that you think would be useful for students, for God's sake, make sure they know it. Market yourself well -- that includes presenting a professional images, preparing classes well, and knowing how to say you're sorry if something doesn't go right.

Each one teaches one. This is just a personal opinion, but I think the best classes I have are the ones where I learn just as much as the student does.

There is no finite pot of riches. And what I mean by that is that, professionally, you have little to lose and a lot more to gain if you help other teachers and work with them. Business guru Suze Orman likes to say that generosity pays off in ways you could never imagine; be kind and generous and you'll get back more than what you gave. If you have teacher friends who are on Twitter, follow them and retweet their posts. If you need that couple of days off, offer your classes to a buddy (trust me, I have never seen a case of one teacher stealing another's student - students are not credit cards or Bic pens.) Like the song says, you get what you give.

These are just my thoughts. Please feel free to share yours.

Texts: Have your say

Some bloggers who write about education are debating the role of textbooks in the classroom. Most of the writers are people who teach kids and teens in regular, English-language schools, but a number of ESL teachers are contributing to the debate.

Some people say that textbooks give a false sense of security and learning.... that, for some teachers, it becomes too easy to rely on what's in the book, without thinking about what the students want or need.

What's your opinion? Do classes feel like "real" learning only if you have a textbook? Does it depend on the teacher? Do you feel more confident if you use a textbook in class?

FREE!! ESL Writing Checklist

In the time that I've been teaching English, both in Spain and in other countries, I've found that almost all of my students hate writing. It's easy to understand why. Effective writing (not just spelling, but constructing arguments and convincing people) isn't easy to do. Students also don't like to spend lots of time trying to write something that sounds intelligent...and then get a paper back that's full of mistakes.

One of the best ways you can avoid the disappointment of getting a (heavily) corrected essay back is to check for mistakes before you submit your text to your teacher. Many (if not almost all) mistakes are easily avoidable, and if you go back and look at the kind of corrections your teacher made on your essays, you'll probably find that you're not making a lot of different kinds of mistakes...you're making the same mistakes over and over and over again.

If this is the case, here's a downloadable writing checklist that can help you revise your writing before you submit it.

http://www.scribd.com/doc/35772510/Writing-Checklist

This isn't a list of every possible thing that students do wrong, but it does cover the most common (and the most easily prevented) mistakes that teachers tend to see. If you're writing the First Certificate exam, these are the kinds of silly mistakes that make students lose points and risk failing.

Juan Francisco's guide to learning English

Hello everybody. I’m Juan, a Spanish speaker of English, in fact, the perfect model of a Spanish learner of English.

Patri has given me the opportunity to write in her fantastic blog about what the habits are that, in my opinion, successful English students have or should have to learn a foreign language like English. A foreign language that, of course, is really difficult to internalize because, among other circumstances, has a Germanic base so different of Spanish’s Latin origins...

You can read Juan Francisco's entire article here:
http://www.scribd.com/doc/35766798

A request from the teacher...

I have a pair of students (a couple, really) who I have been teaching since the beginning of June. Truth is, I don't know whether I should use the present perfect continuous (have been teaching) or past simple (taught) to describe my relationship with them. We were supposed to start class again last Tuesday, but they wrote me an SMS to say that they were out of town and wouldn't be able to start again until today.

So, at 7:30 AM today, I sent them another SMS, asking them again if we were starting class today. I didn't get any response. I called them just after 12 noon, to find out what the story was. "Oh, sorry!" he said. "We're out of town for a couple of days, but we'd like to start again next Tuesday, at 3PM, like normal. Would that be possible?"

Folks, if I can only share one piece of advice with you, let it be this: Be HONEST. If you don't want to continue with your teacher, tell your teacher that you don't want to continue. All you have to do is tell the truth. You won't hurt our feelings, believe me; most of us have been teaching long enough that we will not take it personally if you a) don't have enough money for classes or b) think that we are awful teachers and you want to go somewhere else.

Remember that most teachers do not get paid for classes they do not have. This is how we earn our living and pay our rent. It makes it very difficult for us when students cancel classes randomly! This is why we start insisting on being paid for ten or twenty classes in advance - I know those are policies that students don't like, but your teacher is making a commitment to you when he or she agrees to teach you, and part of that commitment involves knowing that your student will be reliable, too.

If there's something you don't like about the way your teacher teaches, or you think that you should be learning something different or doing things in a different way, be sure your teachers knows. A good teacher should not get angry if you ask for what you want. Any teacher will get very angry if a student disappears or starts acting weird.

I welcome your thoughts and your ideas....

Don't waste your vocabulary!

What do you do with all of that vocabulary that you've learned in class?

If you're like most students, you probably have at least two or three notebooks full of words and notes that you may not have looked at since you finished that class. This is a shame because classes are the perfect place to observe and ask questions about how vocabulary works. But if you don't look at your notes or take the time to review what you've done, then it's all for nothing. It's as if you never went to class. And if you're planning on taking an exam like the First Certificate, it means that you may not be able to use a very important part of your vocabulary during the exam.

You have a better chance of remembering your vocabulary if you do the following things:

1. Record new words and expressions in the context you learned them. Let's say you're doing an FCE class on science. You know that the names of the fields (like biology and psychiatry) are almost the same as they are in Spanish. But you also learn new groups of words and expressions, like to conduct research/an experiment, to record and process data...

Take a piece of paper and draw a circle in the middle. In the middle of the circle, write the name of the context: SCIENCE AND TECHNOLOGY. Then take your pen/pencil and divide the page into different sections: one section might be for the names of laboratory equipment (gauges, test tubes, Bunsen burners, computers), another for the names of people who work in science and technology (laboratory assistants, laboratory technicians, analysts, engineers) and the places where they work (to work in the field, to conduct research on-site....). Keep this sheet with you all the way through the year, and any time you read or hear a new word or expression that talks about science and technology, add it to the list. It seems like a lot of work, but it isn't. It only takes thirty seconds for each new piece of vocabulary. It's really a much more efficient way of practising new words and expressions.

2. What does it sound like? Most students don't have a problem remembering new vocabulary if it's only one syllable. Words that are longer than one syllable can sometimes be difficult, especially if the word isn't made up of words that you already know (copy·right, for example.)

To make sure you can remember how to say the word properly (and that you will understand the word the next time someone uses it in a conversation), make a note of what the word sounds like. Write the accented syllable in capital (CA-pi-tal) letters, and use shorter words that sound like words that you already know.

Here are some examples, using words that I did yesterday in a class in a law firm:

PIRACY: PIE-ra-see
RESTRUCTURE: re-STRUCK-sure
MERCHANDISE: mur-CHAN-d'eyes

You will find it easier to pronounce and hear the word if you understand how it's said in English.

3. Who does what? Verbs are the basis of language: Every language in the world has them. But can you remember which verbs are only for people and which ones are only for things, for example?

Let's take another example from yesterday's class: to counterfeit (COUNT-ur-fit). This is a word that can work as a noun, a verb and as an adjective, but it's very specific to copyright law and piracy. "Falsify", which is close to the word Spanish, won't work: it's too general.

So, to make the word easier to remember and use, let's give it context by using it in specific examples.

Verb: The Guardia Civil arrested a gang that counterfeited €50 bills.
Adjective: I saw a man selling counterfeit CDs in the Metro yesterday.
Noun: Is that a real Prada handbag? -- No, it's a counterfeit (=copy).

Observe the examples: In each case, the subject is a person, and the direct object - the information that you need to complete the idea of the verb - is a thing. It's always a think. You can't falsify or make copies of a person or an animal, and it would be difficult to do it to an idea or concept. This is important to remember, because it helps eliminate any possibilities that are not correct or may give a different meaning to the verb.

(I know, this is a really obvious example, but it becomes more important when you have to learn problem verbs like GET or phrasal verbs like MAKE OVER that may have more than one meaning, depending on whether the direct object is a person, a think or an idea.)

REMEMBER: Your teacher can give you all the new vocabulary that you want, but it's the responsibility of EACH STUDENT to find a way to remember and use the language!!!