TESOL 2014 – Mousetraps for Language Teaching

Being a so called TESOLer is having an opportunity to be part of a dynamic community of professionals.  Therefore, it is always a rewarding experience to attend (and present at!) a TESOL Conference, and this year couldn’t have been different. I knew in advance that I would have a chance to attend presentations with Diane Larsen-Freeman, Douglas Brown and Penny Ur, among others. In fact, there were so many different presentations with interesting titles and renowned presenters that it was hard to choose what to attend.

However, having read, studied and used as reference Dr Douglas Brown’s books for so many years, it would be inevitable not to share his presentation here. His My “top ten” list of mousetraps presentation revolves around the “mousetraps” which work very well in our profession.

He started his presentation by asking the audience to think about the mousetraps – “principles, methods and the kind of foundation stones” - we have been engaged in during our professional lives. Dr Brown made us stop to think about the kind of methodology we rely on in our teaching when we plan our classes. After a brief review of his “Ten Commandments” (from 1990), the presenter stated that, at the time, he simply pictured everything relatively unified in some kind of Strategic Investment Mousetrap, meaning that we teachers would get our students to invest in the language we were teaching. 

Then he wondered whether or not we were right to do so at the time, however, what really mattered was that we were on the right track. From then on, Dr. Brown stated that many things have changed, for there have been lots of research for the past twenty-four years, and that there are now better mousetraps, showing the audience how our profession has progressed in many positive ways. However, before starting to talk about those “top ten” mousetraps, he made a point of telling us that things have evolved, becoming simpler, but not that the twelve principles from his well-known book Teaching by Principles (1993, 2000, 2007) don’t work anymore, for they are still great principles; it’s just that researchers have improved on them. 

That being said, the presenter made it clear that those changes encompass all the connections that researchers in the field have been making with learners, for they revolve around what makes students successful and what makes them interested in learning, not forgetting about all the global implications of teaching English worldwide.  Based on that, he compared the traditional mousetraps to the better mousetraps for language learning.  

Traditional Mousetraps	Better Mousetraps
# 10 Behavioral vs. Cognitive          Competence vs. Performance          Innate (acquired) vs. Learners	Dynamic Systems Theory Emergentism (This term is used to say that language learning is like any other learning, for it emerges from the human being like other skills emerge.)
# 9 Transfer       Interference       Overgeneralization	Embodied Cognition (According to Brown, cognition is part of a whole picture: body, mind and world connections. He states that it’s like “opening up and capturing the concept of transfer, interference and overgeneralization in a much more holistic and refreshing way for teachers”.)
# 8 Focal vs. Peripheral Attention       Controlled vs. Automatic Processing	Form-focused Instruction (FFI): Noticing (The idea here is to get sts to work with the pieces of language they learn and put them together with a whole form with all the communicative efforts. Students need to notice the language in order to be successful at using it.)
# 7 Strategy-based Instruction (SBI)        Awareness -> Action        Autonomy	Self-regulation, Scaffolding Mediation, ZPD (This mousetrap is about having teachers mediate the learning process that learners are going through in the classroom and how they can work within sts’ zone of development to keep them progressing along with awareness and action.)
# 6 Intrinsic Motivation       Meaningful (vs. Rote) Learning       Autonomy	Investment Imagined Community (This principle is important to remind teachers that the perception learners have is more important than the reality they face. As teachers, we need to help learners square their imagination to their own reality; to the community they will be using the language with.)
# 5 Personality & Cognitive Styles       Anxiety, Risk-taking, Empathy       Self-esteem	Communities of Practice Self-efficacy (According to this principle, nowadays, teachers shouldn’t look at learners as individuals who are striving to overcome their anxiety and self-esteem, but as communities of learners. We should see our classrooms as communities of practice and the future of the language in those communities of practice.)
# 4 Community Competence       Willingness to Communicate (WTC)	Interaction,  Collaboration Communities of Practice (Once again, Dr Brown states that researchers’ theories and methodologies are showing that learners shouldn’t be seen as individuals working alone in the world, but people relating to other people, within communities. It’s all about the social nature of language.)
# 3  Intercultural Competence        Cross-cultural Analysis        Social Distance, Optimal Distance	Languageculture (With the global use of English, in this mousetrap, the presenter says that the concept of crossing-cultures is changing and that the term Languaculture is being used, for it captures the notion that language and culture are intertwined.)
# 2 Language Ego        Inhibition	Identity (This is an extremely important principle, for the whole notion of identity is related to the way people talk, and that is something we can’t change. There are few things you can do to improve the way people talk, because the way they talk is the way they are.)
# 1 Empowerment       Self-actualization	Agency (This is the concept which Dr Brown believes wraps it all up, for it reminds us that, in his own words, “our mission with our students is to help them to be agents, using the language, internalizing the language, making choices of their own, and not think of themselves as second class citizens”.)

Before his closing remarks, Dr Brown mentioned he hopes that, in a couple of years, there will be no distinction between non-native English speakers and native English speakers, for this distinction is something from the past. He also added that non-native English speaker teachers who have learned English as their second (or third) language are the most wonderful teachers that one can have, for we are agents; we have identified ourselves in the English language.

The presenter ended his presentation with a quote from Gandhi which says that we “must be the change we want to see”. Douglas Brown thinks that we are becoming even more humane in the process of being English teachers. He is also encouraged by what has been happening in the last four decades and the directions that our profession is turning to and the methodology that has been embracing the different identities of our learners. For all of us there, he left the challenge of taking those principles and making them work in our classrooms.

As for me, I left his presentation not only feeling blessed for having the opportunity to attend it, but also with the feeling that one of my favorite authors, who has inspired me as a professional for more than twenty years, has shown that I have also been on the right track by researching and trying to adapt the mousetraps to my own teaching.


*H. Douglas Brown & Heekyeong Lee are launching the fourth edition of Teaching by Principles, in early 2015.  

Simple Prep iPad Activity - Power up Motivation in the EFL Classroom

 

    Have you ever been surprised by how creative our students can be? This post is about a task I asked my Teen 3 students to do that required no prep and surprised me a lot because they came out with outcomes that were way more creative than what I had imagined.

    I was teaching vocabulary to describe feelings, and I gave groups slips with some vocabulary related to the lesson. I asked students to take pictures to illustrate the words with the iPads. .

Students then had to make a short video using Educreations asking the group to guess what feelings their photos related to. We had a lot of fun, and they wanted to play the game over and over, which I did not mind at all because they got lots of personalized input.

Simple Prep iPad Activity: TELLAGAMI - Giving Life to Students´ Avatar and their Language Production

Tellagami is one of those multi-purpose free apps that will give an extra boost to your classroom activity, with lots of student production in English.

Here´s an overview of the app:



In the classroom, use Tellagami to:

• let the avatar tell a story about a specific place (you can change the background there)
• review a concept. Students have to summarize what they´ve just learned
• do a follow-up activity in which students tell their own views on the topic
• drill basic structures in a young learners´ class ( I like; I don´t like; I have; I don´t have)
• practice physical descriptions when students are creating their avatar; then, they record about their best friend´s physical appearance
• work on clothing by changing the avatar´s outfits; the avatar can record why he chose that specific outfit

Students can record their own voices, or even use the text to speech feature (they write the text and choose the accent of their avatar. Warning: this feature only works when there´s Internet connection).

GOING THE EXTRA MILE: there´s an editing feature on YOUTUBE that you can put your students´ Tellagami videos altogether in one single Youtube video. Here´s an example from a training session we had about high performance class. First, we used this poster as a discussion springboard.

http://www.teachthought.com/ 

Then, the groups created their avatars and recorded their main ideas about highly performaning classes. Finally, I edited them, using Youtube editor, after having uploaded all the gamis.

Ready to begin? We´d love t know what you´ve been doing in class with Tellagami. 

Finding Motivation by Motivating Students

What do you do when your students fail their tests? Do you blame them or yourself? I used to blame myself, but I’ve learnt that the best alternative, at least for me, was to stop assigning blame and start thinking outside the box.

It’s natural to think that there are predetermined roles in the classroom and that simply by enrolling or being in the classroom, everyone will know what to do. That is exactly how I thought things were: I would go to a specific classroom in a specific time and so would students; I would teach and they would learn. It was only when I was confronted with terrible grades — only 3 out of 10 students had passing grades on their first written test — that I realized I was wasting a great opportunity.

My first reaction was to think I was a terrible teacher. After all, I am an absolute beginner, having only less than two years of experience. I spoke to several senior teachers and asked for advice. The first one I received was to check what exactly the students’ mistakes had been. Had they all made the same mistakes? If yes, I needed to check the way I had been teaching them. If not, I should check the students’  academic records to see if they had had difficulties in the previous levels. After some research, I realized two things: all students, even the ones who had good grades, made the same kinds of mistakes; and none of them had had a history of below average grades.


It’s important to note that students in the lower intermediate level get a really bad reputation. They are said to be the “weakest links”; students who didn’t do well on their replacement tests. I kept hearing that those bad grades were just what I should have expected. I felt extremely uncomfortable to just accept that these students were weak and that there was nothing I could do. In my mind, If I had been a better teacher, they would have done better. Besides, I had looked into their academic records and I could not find the proof that they were just bad students.

Another thing I was told by senior teachers was that there is a large gap between the Teens course and the Lower Intermediate course. In the latter, tests demand a lot more from students’ cognitive abilities. In fact, the one difficulty all students had was with listening and reading comprehension. It wasn’t something I had taught them; I had been too focused on teaching grammar and vocabulary.

My first step, after gathering advice I had received from several senior teachers, was to deliver the news to the students about their low performance and, at the same time, motivate them to do better on their next test. It seemed impossible! But the teachers I spoke to knew me and trusted me. They said I could do it. So I asked students how they had prepared for the test, how they thought they did, and if it had been easy or hard. I spoke to them in Portuguese and they opened up very quickly. I found out a lot from my students that day. They are under a lot of pressure from their parents, their regular schools and themselves. They also thought, same as I did, that teaching and learning were automatic processes, and all they had to do to get a good grade was to “sit down and study”. For them, given how they did on their test, it hadn’t been enough.  I thought they were being too hard on themselves, but then again, I realized I had been too hard on myself too.

I needed to take the focus out of this blame game. I asked the students to trust me and to help me help them. Thinking about it now, I noticed that what I did was to ask them to stop looking for someone to blame and start focusing on learning. I remembered something that my coach had told me on my first semester at CTJ: “We a have to teach students how to learn”. So based on that and also on the things I have been learning at the TDC - Teacher Development Course, I started changing the way I planned the lessons for that specific group.

The first thing was to teach them strategies such as scanning and skimming. I showed them how to look for information, how to look for clues in exercises, patterns in sentences, and in essence, how to develop strategies to solve the exercises. I also turned the wrap up stages of the lessons into mini projects. For example, after a lesson about the differences between past simple and past continuous, I told the students to create a story using only three sentences. They all sat down on the classroom floor to make a poster together, and it was the first time I saw them actually happy to be in class.

Basically, I started focusing on making the students feel independent and in control of their own learning. I stopped simply giving them information and started giving them the tools to get there themselves. I noticed a complete change in behavior. What I had thought was just normal teenage behavior during a class at 2pm had basically been lack of motivation. Before, they were barely present in class, mostly quiet and unresponsive. They didn’t do their homework and they didn’t answer my questions. They also spoke a lot of Portuguese. Now, they try harder to speak English, they use the language being presented, they respond faster to eliciting. And, I’m relieved to say, out of all the students, only one had a below average grade on their second test. It was not a miracle change though, — the lowest passing grade was 76 — but I’m counting my blessings!

This had been the one group I dreaded meeting every week. They made me feel like a real failure. Now that they are motivated, they are the best part of my week. I’m glad I stopped focusing on laying blame and decided to trust the advice of senior teachers: I learned that motivating my students was the best way to motivate myself.

BRAZTESOL Conference - Different Generations: A common Goal

We, Carolina Piacenti and Evania Netto have just attended the Braz-Tesol Conference in João Pessoa, AL. It was a great conference: well organized, in a great site (Escola Internacional Cidade Viva) and in a beautiful city. Furthermore, the quality of the presentations were fantastic and there wasn´t a single talk or workshop that we didn´t like or regretted attending.

However, as the topic of our own presentation was “generations” and the way that different generations of teachers can benefit by working together, we started paying attention to the mix of generations that could be seen and heard in the event. To start with, we browsed through the program and realized we could choose from a workshop given by one of the most renowned ELT senior representatives from Brasília-Sara Walker, watch the plenary session given by the brilliant Jeremy Harmer or feel touched by the emotional session about getting older given by Jane Revell. It was not only the senior generation that made presence in the conference, though. Looking again at the program, we could easily verify that the Baby Boomers and the members of Generation X were also active, bringing innumerous contributions to the field with names such as Ben Goldstein, Paul Seligson and Jeff Stranks. 

On the other hand, if one preferred to see the newer generation of speakers, they would not be disappointed as they would be able to check CTJ world-wide technology expert Carla Arena, an academic session about gaming and gamification used in teaching and learning a second language given by Janaína Weissheimer or the fantastic J.J. Wilson talk about teacher development. Nevertheless, due to the amount and variety of choices, one would not be able to see everything and would have to choose something related to their own field of interests which would turn out not to make attendees less enthusiastic but to enhance their social networking and ability to reflect upon their careers as they could see themselves working in pairs with Scott Thurnbury, Steve Taylore-Knowles, Élcio Souza or just a novice teacher who had just graduated from college.

So, as you can see, Braz-Tesol was a fruitful and enriching professional experience where different identities met to form a mosaic of generations that by collaborating could help each other achieve the goal that the older, the middle or the younger generations of teachers  have in common - to teach English in effective ways. 

   

 

TESOL 2014 - On Language Development and Affordance

One of the highlights of the 2014 TESOL International Conference was Diane Larsen Freeman’s plenary entitled Complexity Theory: Renewing Our Understanding of Language, Learning, and Teaching.  Complexity Theory in Second Language Acquisition is not an easy topic to digest, but Larsen-Freeman made it easy to understand by way of her outstanding presentation skills and the illustrative slides that helped visualize the actual simplicity of the theory and how much sense it makes.

My first more in-depth encounter with Larsen-Freeman’s discussion of Complexity Theory as an approach to second language acquisition, or rather, development, was through her chapter in Dwight Atkinson’s book on Alternative Approaches to Second Language Acquisition (Larsen-Freeman, 2011). I have to admit I had to read it three times to really grasp the essence of the theory and how it related to second language acquisition.

If you’re not familiar with Complexity Theory and its relationship with Second Language Acquisition, I’d like to share with you my short summary of Larsen-Freeman’s fantastic TESOL Plenary, particularly regarding the topics of language acquisition and language input.  Then, if you’re interested in more in-depth reading on Complexity Theory, I recommend Larsen-Freeman’s chapter in Atkinson’s book or this article (Larsen-Freeman, 2007).

Complexity theory seeks to explain complex, dynamic, open, adaptive, self-organizing, nonlinear systems (Larsen-Freeman, 2011, p. 52). Fractals are the signature of complex systems; as we go deeper and deeper into the structure, the same pattern occurs.

Larsen-Freeman’s main thesis in her plenary is that, within the Complexity Theory framework, we can’t really say that language is acquired, but rather, it is developed. Acquisition implies language as a commodity that you ingest somehow. Language development is the emergence of language abilities in real time. A pattern arises from the interaction of the parts; emergence is the spontaneous occurrence of something new. The edges of language are blurry; there is no end and there is no state. Acquisition suggests completion and a one-way process, while development is bidirectional.

Larsen-Freeman also finds the term input problematic because it dehumanizes the learner. For her, acceptability is interlocutor-dependent. Input is problematic because it is inert knowledge. She asks us why it is that students can do something in the classroom but then can't do it outside the classroom later on. It's because we don't teach language as dynamic. Meaningless repetition contributes to the inert knowledge problem. She points out that iteration is different from repetition. As a learner's system develops, it functions as a resource for further development.

Students need to adapt their behavior to an increasingly complex environment. This can be done through iterative activity under slightly different conditions. Input suggests a one-way action between an individual and the environment. Affordance is a better term to use in this case - providing a language-rich environment where students will find their own affordances; language develops from experience, afforded by the learner's perceptions of the environment.

This development is individual; learners define their own learning path. For this reason, we can't average out data. What should be taught is not only language but also learners. We need to design spaces with learners specifically in mind.

Above all, we transform; we don't transfer!

References:

Larsen-Freeman, D. (2007). On the complementarity of Chaos/Complexity Theory and Dynamic Systems Theory in understanding second language acquisitin. Bilingualism: Language and Cognition 10 (1), pp. 35-37.

Larsen-Freeman, D. (2011). A Complexity Theory Approach to Second Language Acquisition/Development. In D. Atkinson, Alternative Approaches to Second Language Acquisition (pp. 48-72). New York, NY: Routledge.

Image courtesy of freedigitalphotos.net

IATEFL 2014 - ELT Conference Highlights

Harrogate is a beautiful former spa town in northern England and it was in this cozy city where spring was blossoming and flowers were everywhere that the 48^th Annual IATEFL Conference was held. It was my first attendance at an IATEFL Conference and I was quite impressed with the extraordinary multiculturalism , the astonishing volume of choice , the impressive array of speakers and the cheerful atmosphere among the participants.

 Overwhelmed by such a rich, diverse choice of options, I tried to select as many interesting  sessions as possible and spent four days  running around the beautiful Harrogate Convention Center trying not to miss anything. I attended excellent plenaries and also got in touch with teachers from different parts of the world who work and do research related to coaching and  mentoring, one of my areas of interest and also the topic of my presentation in the conference.

The coaching and mentoring delegates formed a team in Harrogate! We attended each other’ s presentations and exchanged a lot of information and experience. It was wonderful to see that people from the most distant parts of the world have been working hard to implement collaborative practices in order to enhance teachers capacity and at the same time promote professional development. All the sessions were excellent.

One valuable presentation I was able to catch was given by Dr. Svetlana Belic  Malinic from Belgrade, Serbia.  Svetlana presented the results of an  action research conducted in an international school in Serbia which aimed to bring about change in teachers perceptions of their pedagogical practice. The teachers were introduced into reciprocal coaching schemata and, by doing peer coaching, were able to support one another in their professional growth, which positively affected their self-assessment. This shows how valuable it is to work collaboratively and how teachers gain by exchanging their experience and practice.

In addition to the thought-provoking presentations I attended, there was one innovative session format I really appreciated called  ELT Conversation , which involved discussion between two leading ELT professionals, Jeremy Harmer and Scott  Thornbury. In this session the speakers interviewed each other about the Communicative Approach. After 20 years, is it time to redefine its concept?  Is there a contemporary view of CLT? For more than one hour, in a full auditorium, Harmer and Thornbury discussed the gains and losses of this so well-established approach for language teaching followed by questions addressed from the audience.  A wonderful moment to revisit this approach and reflect upon what we have doing in our classrooms in the last decades.

In the opponent flow, Jim Srivener gave a lively presentation reassuring the importance of teaching grammar and urged the audience to ignore those voices that tell you that you have to communicate all the time. The presenter stressed that, yes, students want, need and learn from grammar. The question is how teachers can make grammar genuinely engaging, valuable and challenging. In order to make grammar really meaningful, Jim Scrivener stresses that we should use lots of examples. They are input. And we should play with examples. This is practice. We should never forget to make examples sound real. Personalization is fundamental. After personalizing , students then are able to use the language.

As you can see through my highlights above, IATEFL was filled with diversity and innovation which have made me an IATEFL convert. Those were professionally inspiring and enjoyable days that will always remain in my mind. My thanks for the support and encouragement the Casa has given me to participate in such a fabulous event.   

Margarete Nogueira

TESOL 2014 and Being a Leader

This was the first time I attended a TESOL and I was amazed at how big and how well-organized it is. It was great to see so many teachers from all over the world learning, sharing, motivating and being motivated. There was a huge variety of topics for the presentations, with options for everybody’s interests. I chose to attend those related to Teacher Development and Leadership not only because of my present position at Thomas, but also because I believe we teachers are always searching for professional development opportunities and we are all leaders.

There was one particular presentation I enjoyed a lot and would like to share with you: “Leadership Skills and Styles Affecting Leaders” by Dr. Sufian Abu-Rmaileh, from the United Arab Emirates University.

He started by defining Leadership:

“The act of identifying important goals and then motivating and enabling others to devote themselves and all necessary resources to its achievement. It includes summoning one’s self and others to learn and adapt to the new situation represented by the goal” (NYSBR 2003, p. 3)

“Much more an art, a belief, a condition of the heart, than a set of things to do” (De Pree 1989, p.148)

So, who is a leader?

Astin and Astin (2000) define a leader as anyone who has a formal position and who holds the role of bringing about change in the society in which they live and work.

De Pree (1990) says that one of the major tasks of a leader is to expand and unleash the talents and skills of the different people in the organization.

These definitions made me think of how much we teachers match them. Every semester we face different challenges to which we have to adapt and learn how to deal with. We are in charge of groups of students who need our constant guidance, model, assistance and motivation. More than teaching English, we teach them how to respect and help their peers, how to accept different opinions, how to overcome their difficulties. 

Good leaders help their team achieve their goal, which should be in accordance with the institution’s/organization’s. I particularly like De Pree’s  saying about the role of a leader. A good teacher/leader should be able to expand and unleash the talents and skills of the different people s/he leads.

There are different leadership styles and we can adopt different styles according to our and others’ necessities and in different moments of our life. Dr. Abu-Rmaileh talked about the six leadership styles listed below.

1.       Directive Leader:

Allows little or no negotiations

Keeps tight control without delegating

Is not flexible or open to new ideas

2.       Visionary Leader:

Has clear standards and feedback

Explains the logic behind procedures

Inspires people to a higher purpose for their work

3.       Affliliative Leader:

Creates harmony and affective/emotional bonding

Avoids confrontation with others

Provides little explanation on direction or rationale behind tasks

4.       Democratic/Participative Leader:

Collaboration and team concurrence

High on trust, respect and commitment

Motivates his/her team by empowering them to direct themselves

5.       Pacesetting Leader:

Sets high standards for performance

Obsesses about doing things better, faster, quicker

The pursuit of excellence is overwhelming

6.       Coaching Leader:

Helps team members to discover their own strengths and weaknesses

Guides people to find and create their own career development

Links goals, personal and career, with those of the organization

Leadership Matrix

	How it Builds Resonance	Impact On Climate	When Appropriate	Competency requirements
Visionary	Moves people towards shared dreams	Most strongly positive	When changes require a new vision, or, when clear direction is needed	Self-Awareness, Self-Confidence, Empathy, Transparency, Visionary Leadership, Change Catalyst
Coaching	Connects what a person wants with organisational goals	Highly positive	To help an employee improve performance by building long term capabilities	Self-Awareness, Empathy, Developing Others
Affiliative	Creates harmony by connecting people to each other	Positive	To heal rifts in a team, motivate during stressful times, or strengthen connections	Empathy, Teamwork & Collaboration, Conflict management, Building Bonds
Democratic	Values peoples input and get commitment through participation	Positive	To build buy in or consensus, or to get valuable input from employees	Empathy, Teamwork & Collaboration, Influence
Pacesetting	Meets challenging and exciting goals	Is often Highly Negative  - because it is generally poorly executed	To get high quality results from a motivated and competent team	Self-Awareness, Empathy, Self Control, Achievement Drive, Transparency, Initiative, Adaptability, Teamwork & Collaboration
Commanding	Soothes fears by giving clear direction in an emergency	Can be Highly Negative – because so often misused	In a crisis, to kick start a turnaround, or with a problem employee	Self-Awareness, Self-Control, Empathy, Achievement drive, Initiative

http://www. maetrix.com.au/leadership_styles.asp

I’m sure you have recognized yourself at different moments of your professional life in many of the characteristics listed above. These characteristics are just a few among many others for each style. We can select some and put them together to come up with our idea of an effective leader. Dr. Abu-Rmaileh presented effective leaders as being:

-          Visionary

• -          Trustworthy, fair and honest
• -          Role Models and Mentors – “Effective leaders demonstrate courage in difficult situations, and provide a model of moral leadership for other to emulate” (NYSBR, 2003, p. 2)
• -          Visible
• -          Dedicated – Effective leaders are dedicated to the institution which they serve. They have commitment and loyalty to the constituents and to the institution.
• -          Good Communicators

The implications of good leadership are many. Good leadership in the classroom leads to a calm end of semester, not necessarily an easy one, but surely one in which we have a sense of accomplishment. Some of the implications Dr. Abu-Rmaileh talked about and I believe are appropriate for a classroom environment were:

• -          Achievement drive: high level of effort, high levels of ambition, energy and initiative
• -          Honesty and integrity: a trustworthy environment
• -          Self-confidence: belief in one’s self, ideas and ability
• -          Emotional maturity: well-adjusted groups

The presentation made me reflect on the kind of leader I am and the kind of leader I want to be, my personal characteristics that influence on my leadership style, and the aspects I need to work on in order to be a better leader. I hope it helps you see yourselves as leaders too and realize the importance of being a good leader.

TESOL 2014 Through Gamification and Complexity Theory

Going to the TESOL Convention in Portland last March made me feel realized as an English teacher for two reasons: first, that was the second time I had the pleasure of attending an international convention; second, I was there as a presenter! Last year, my friend and co-worker Carolina Barreto and I decided to submit our workshop and, fortunately,  it was accepted to the TESOL 2014. Both of us were anxious to be presenters in a foreign country to an audience from all over the world. The result could not be better - the spectators were engaged for 1h45 minutes, actively participating in the hands-on activities we were demonstrating in the workshop named BREAKING THE ICE - Going beyond simple icebreakers through motivation.

I am a teacher who loves creating games to use in class with my students, so the topics that caught my attention were the ones related to the use of technology or practical games. I have to confess that I did not see many innovations in terms of technologies in the classroom. For this reason, I have to admit that the work we do at the Casa may be considered at par with the most recent trends in terms of Mobile Learning.

One of the presentations I attended drew my attention because it was called The Gamification Of Learning Outcomes  (https://docs.google.com/file/d/0Bxrfi4WnBTonOWRieFFlWDRVQTQ/edit?pli=1) . In that presentation, 3 professors from Colorado first clarified that gamification is not game. After briefly mentioning some theoretical aspects of language and technology, they exemplified with their work with foreign students, using facts, statistics and results.  They ended their presentation showing the survey they did with those students about that work, and, at that time, did another survey with the audience. (https://cuboulder.qualtrics.com/SE/?SID=SV_5ciU5FolfhxKfC5) Each person had to use his/her own mobile phone to send his/her opinion about the presentation.  The results were shown on the screen. It was dynamic, easy and interesting.

Attending  the session Think like a Video Game Designer to Build Better Courses, by Josh Wilson, from the Kansai Gaidai University, I became aware of many concepts about games that I had never realized before, such as: games are fail positive environments; games escape from the real world; games are learning tools and learning platforms; games design the experience for choice and to be won; and some others. These concepts are certainly going to help my reflection upon the games I create to use in class.

In my opinion, the top presentation was the one by the famous linguist Diane Larsen-Freeman, Complexity Theory: Renewing Our Understanding of language, Learning, and Teaching. Besides admiring her ideas and her culture for a long time, I liked the fact that she spoke for about an hour about how language changes day-by-day, and we, teachers, have to be aware of those evolutions and adopt them in our classes. In her words, she manages to introduce some humor to make the audience feel comfortable and engaged in her lecture. It was a blast!