ELTA Newsletter November – December Dear all, It seems unreal that a new school /academic year has already started and Christmas is so close! All of us are very busy around this time of the year but it seems that a lot of us do not neglect either to find time for professional development. This explains the amazing number of ELT Flash reports we have received again over the past few weeks! It is, therefore, such a great opportunity for all of us to read about our colleagues’ experiences. To begin with, our very own Branka Dečković, writes about the IATEFL Hungary Conference in Budapest and the various workshops she attended and the new people she met. Anica Đokić reports on the 1st SKA ELT Conference, Bratislava and she is convinced that conferences are more actually about the people, teachers, because, after all, they are organized by teachers, for teachers!! It seems to be so indeed, as other colleagues share their memories of the various conferences they attended the previous months: Marija Lukač of the ELT conference in the Czech Republic, Snežana Filipović remembers the BETA Bulgaria conference, TH Emeše Both the 24 IATEFL Poland conference and Vladimir Široki the IATEFL
conference, one of the largest and most dynamic ELT communities in the world. In our Feature article, Tanja Milunović gives an account on the ETeacher Scholarship Program, TEPT (Teaching English to Preteens and Teens), she was nominated to enroll in, and her thoughts about the various stages she had to go through. In the article for the Teacher Development column, Jana Živanović elaborates on different reasons political, economic, social, educational and cultural for learning English and focuses on the ways of promoting globalmindedness among students. In the Lesson Plan section, there are two lesson plans you can read: one by Valentina Nikolovski on the use of Present Simple Tense and Food and a second one by Nevena Stoilkov who shows us how to revise vocabulary in English with a PowerPoint Mix presentation. In the First Aid Kit column, Gorica Kostić narrates how she put up a creative show, “Shakespeare at Olimp”, made by hardworking,
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diligent kids and herself, the teacher, and how the whole experience transformed the children’s experience of learning a language in an unconventional way. Read more about this project which won Extraordinary Award Malala 2015 for universal education . A huge congratulations from ELTA Editorial team to Gorica Kostić and her colleagues from the Primary School “Marija Bursać” who participated in the universal project and won this award! There is also a new column: the Literature Spot, and the first one to write for it is Tatjana Gojković who gives an analysis of the character of Candace Compson in the novel ’’The Sound and the Fury”. Also, in the Bookworms, Olivera Ilić reviews , published the ebook CREATIVITY IN THE ENGLISH LANGUAGE CLASSROOM by the British Council and edited by Alan Maley and Nik Peachey. Finally, the Upcoming Events are a great reminder for all the future ELT events! We sincerely hope you will enjoy reading our last issue for 2015. If you feel inspired to write for us and get some of your own work published, do not hesitate to contact us at newsletter.elta@gmail.com . All the best, ELTA Editorial team
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IATEFL Hungary Conference “Looking Forward, Looking Back” Branka Dečković, English language teacher, Medical school “Sestre Ninković”, Kragujevac, Serbia Key words: IATEFL Hungary, conference, representative
Budapest is beautiful in autumn.
I was lucky to have been ELTA representative at IATEFL Hungary this year. It was their jubilee conference – 25 years. The conference lasted for three days. There were several plenary speakers, among which there were Alan Maley, Jill Hadfield, Marjorie Rosenberg, Russell Stannard, Jane Revell, Nádasdy Ádám . Hungarian
linguist
Nádasdy
Ádám , who
is
professor
at
the Department
of
English Linguistics of Eötvös Loránd University in Budapest , gave a wonderful plenary talk on transcription. It reminded me how important it is to invite professors from our universities to give plenary talks at ELTA conferences. It is always difficult to choose which workshop to attend, from a variety of workshops offered. This year, they had nine workshops going on in the same slot! The first one I went to see was a workshop given by Agnieszka Luczak – “Classroom management – share the responsibility with your students”. It was a fantastic workshop with lots of practical ideas for classroom management. One of the ideas was to assign roles to students
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in the class, such as: assistant for latecomers, mobile phone collector, homework reminder, seating manager, etc. Another quite inspiring workshop was “Mirror, Mirror: The Impact of Culture on Reflective Practice”, given by Adelina Holmes. She talked about reflective cycles, and participants did a number of tasks and activities that are designed to help teachers as well as students to reflect upon their work (Borton’s, Gibbs and Kolb’s reflective cycles). Barbara Bujtás gave a wonderful and creative workshop on using Minecraft in teaching and learning English. Those of you who have sons (614 years old, I guess) or teach boys of this age, know what I’m talking about. One of the great things about conferences is meeting new people, of course. I was lucky to have met a fabulous woman from Croatia, who was actually my roommate – Dubravka Blažić. She had a practical and inspiring workshop on techniques for teaching vocabulary. I also met David A. Hill, who spoke with me in Serbian! I have to say that I was quite happy with the number of people that showed up for my workshop, as well as with the feedback I got from them afterwards. A student helper who was there as well, approached me after the workshop and said “Now I know that I want to be a teacher!” Could I have had a better feedback than that? The second great thing about conferences is, of course, meeting old friends. And, if they actually live in the city where the conference is held, you can have a personal guide and visit the places only those who live there can take you to. Like Ruinpubs. ☺ *** Branka Dečković has been teaching English for 11 years. She works in the Medical School in Kragujevac. She loves teaching teenagers and learning from them *I certify that I have the right to publish these photos.
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“Teaching Together, Learning Together” the report from the 1st SKA ELT Conference, Bratislava
Anica Đokić, official ELTA Serbia representative, Novi Sad, Serbia
Key words: conference, representative, Slovakia, teachers
CONFERENCE : a large meeting , often lasting a few days , where people who are interested in a particular s ubject come together to discuss i deas . ( http://www.macmillandictionary.com/dictionary/british/conference ) ELT conferences are about new ideas and innovations in the world of English language teaching. But – not only about that! They are more about the people, teachers, because, after all, they are organized by teachers, for teachers. Conferences are made OF teachers, BY teachers and FOR teachers. The 1st International SKA ELT Conference was held on 2526 September, 2015, at the Faculty of Arts, Comenius University in Bratislava. It was a historic event, because it was the first ELT conference organised by the Slovak Chamber of English Teachers. Everyone from the organising committee, as well as volunteers, put an enormous amount of effort to make this conference unforgettable. Starting from the selection of speakers and their workshops to the social events, where the participants could win a prize in the raffle, or the local wine and cheese tasting hour, when meeting new colleagues went more smoothly and spontaneously than usually.
Picture 1 Opening plenary by Peter Medgyes , with a motto saying "If The title of the conference was "Teaching Together, Learning Together"
you want to go fast, go alone. If you want to go far, go together." And this was really the case:
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together, we were exploring innovative techniques in the ELT world, sharing experiences and good practice examples. From my personal perspective, drama in the English classroom was the most attractive topic, which gathered together drama professionals and drama (teacher) enthusiasts alike. I heard of ‘Improve’, the 5th language skill, for the first time, at the workshop "Impro(wise) to Improve" , facilitated by Tomaš Andrašik. He suggested that theatre improvisation in our classrooms can
empower the communicative competence of our students, and trained the participants to do some energising, engaging, motivating and spontaneous exercises with our students. In his evening plenary, David Fisher showed us how we can all use theatre as a tool for teaching. Jasmina Milićević presented, in the workshop "Dare to Be Different", how a creative process in an ELT classroom can result in a whole play or sketch tackling some problems teenagers face in their everyday lives. Dragana Andrić gave us some fresh ideas how to "Liven up Our Lessons with Drama." Mona Arvinte also shared an invaluable set of drama activities that can easily be put into practice in our everyday teaching. Going back to the beginning it was teachers from all around the globe who made this conference successful, and who set a standard towards which all associations and future conferences should strive.
Picture 2 An afterworkshop selfie
Picture 3 The international
crew *I certify that I have the right to publish these photos. ***** Anica Đokić has been an EFL teacher for 10 years. She graduated from the Faculty of Philosophy at the University of Novi Sad, Serbia, and holds an MA in English language. She works in the
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elementary school "Sonja Marinković" in her hometown, Novi Sad. She has been an active member of ELTA Serbia since 2006, as a board member, regional coordinator, and teacher trainer. She has also participated in a number of conferences throughout Europe. Her fields of interest are teaching young learners, drama in the English classroom, and teaching unplugged.
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Report from '2015 Shades of ELT' Conference Marija Lukač, Grammar and Economics High School in Kovin, Serbia Key words: conference, representative, Czech Republic
Place: Tomas Bata University, Faculty of Logistics and Crisis Management, Uherské Hradiště, Czech Republic Time: 4 – 6 September 2015 Dear all, My name is Marija Lukač and I was lucky enough to be selected as ELTA representative for this partner conference organized by ATECR (Association of Teachers of English of the Czech Republic). This report is hopefully going to project a clear and representative, if not a comprehensive picture. of what I experienced there. The plenary speakers were Graham Hall, Russell Stannard, Rakesh Bhanot, Lynda Steyne, Gary Anderson, Hugh Dellar and David Fisher.You can still read their abstracts herе , and interviews here https://atecr2015shades.wordpress.com/plenaryspeakersabstracts/ https://atecr2015shades.wordpress.com/plenaryspeakersinterviews/ . I will talk only about sessions I visited. Let's start with Graham Hall, because his plenary opened the Conference on Friday. He talked about 'Teaching, innovation and change: teaching in theory… and in practice', where he stressed the difference between Theory (the one or ones we learned at university and later on, about how languages are learnt) and theory (the one we adopted, adapted and created for our teaching practice, about how languages are best learnt and taught). I would call the latter 'teacher's beliefs' and a lot of people at the conference touched on that, but it was well stressed in Lynda Steyne's Conference closing plenary. Back to Graham Hall, he said that ' we, as teachers, ‘navigate’ between tradition and innovation, between what we know and what is new (or new to us) and between what we know about our He emphasised that we were 'thinking own classrooms and global methodological trends. teachers' or '‘selective consumers’ of trends in ELT. He quoted H. Douglas Brown about teaching being “a believing and doubting game”, which I found very true.
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Then I experienced my first outdoor workshop with Daniela Valikova, a Czech colleague who has just quit teaching and pursued her dream of working as a holistic therapist. Her workshop 'To be or not to be ...a teacher of English' dealt with different aspects of teaching, what motivated us, what we hated, and we did it through mental imagery, relaxation techniques and senses. It was probably the most unusual but also the most effective workshops I have ever been to. The second day started with coplenaries and I chose Russell Stannard's 'Key tools that can impact on teaching and learning'. Russel suggested several tools, told us very clearly what's free and what's not, and this is what he suggested we can start with Video (homework) corrections http://www.teachertrainingvideos.com/youtube/usingawebcaminyoutube.html and simple
vocabulary
revising
tools,
such
as
Quizlet
http://www.teachertrainingvideos.com/quizzesdialogues/howtousequizlet.html He also said that Edmodo which was fast becoming one of the most popular technologies in education. 'If I recommend you learn one thing, it is this!', says he, and I leave you with the link to start https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9dFgyzIo8Uk . Next, I saw Art or science, journey or struggle? Metaphors we teach and learn by Graham Hall. I won't dwell on it, but I want to share the idea – look at the covers of your coursebooks. Is there a wood, a desert, an ocean, a road, as a metaphor of teaching and learning? This is how publishers see our profession and our students. But what do we think? If I think it's a journey, what am I, a tour guide? And what roles do my students have then? Does it impact my teaching and their learning? Think about your beliefs and views a little bit, it was very revealing for me. Lucie Podroužková spent two years teaching in Texas, and her workshop gave an insight into life
and
education
there
( https://drive.google.com/file/d/0Boc041RqVXlQ2V2NUhDVzJUMzg/view ) , especially because her son was with her, and he went to an American kindergarten. It was a very interesting workshop as we realized how little we knew about Texas, and, we got a lot of ideas of how to introduce this country to our students. David Fisher, director of The Bear Educational Theatre, in his ' What is the Difference Between an English Teacher and a Maths Teacher?' explored our prejudice and said we were all in 'the same business' and he demonstrated a number of less traditional activities for ESL
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classroom. Later that day, he and his lovely wife performed 'The Proposal' by A.P.Chekhov for us . The last workshop I went to was Benjamin Dobbs' (Director, BD Communications) 'Teaching Business English or Training International Communication?' The answer is, a little bit of both, having in mind the level of your students. We discussed the purpose of Business English, why we were teaching it, and where we wanted to be. We talked about how personality, culture or context influence action in different situations, and we considered how we were (not) preparing our students for it.We also talked about competencies for international communication, and differences and a common ground between General English and Business English. I teach both, so I found this workshop extremely useful. Finally, inspired by Taylor Mali's slam poem 'What Teachers Make', Lynda Steyne elicited from us what we make – all the phrasal verbs that come to your mind (make up, make for, make for (the door)), all the idioms (make do, make every effort) , explored through our profession. It was mindblowing. And so was the round table at the end of the Conference where the teachers asked whatever was bothering them, and the plenary speakers shared their views on the problems. I enjoyed that tremendously. To end up with a personal recommendation although applying as an ELTA representative makes you step out of your comfort zone, it is worth it. It taught me how to organize my trip and stay for the first time in my life online (with a little help of my friends who I still owe a coffee shame on me), and it introduced me to great people and a business opportunity. We live, learn, and have fun doing so. ***** Marija Lukač, lives in Pančevo, teaches in Grammar and Economics High School in Kovin. She is more than happy to add more ELT people on her FB, so feel free to contact her. https://www.facebook.com/misskovac
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THE SUNNY SIDE OF SOFIA – Celebrating variety: Making the most of your teaching context Snežana Filipović, Kolarac Foundation, Belgrade, Serbia Key words: enlightenment, sunshine, light, memorable
It has been quite some time since I attended BETA Bulgaria conference and every time I think about it my memories get sunnier and sunnier! I remember the conference all in bright colours and sunshine, which is a bit strange because I was welcomed by Sofia with showers of rain. Our first day there saw us searching for the accommodation in the drizzle, as if we were playing the most wonderful game of treasure hunt. Our team was luckily and quite accidentally backed up by Vaselena, a wonderful Bulgarian student who wouldn’t give up until we were safely handed over to the reception. The weather improved as soon as we were inside and from that moment my sunshine memories paint Sofia’s beautiful sights outside, as well as the inside of one perfect venue for the conference ‘The Institute for World Economy’. I must say I have been wondering why there is so much sunshine in my memories and then my mind made a pattern for me: sunshine light enlightening. And that is the key the Sofia conference was enlightening for me in many different ways. That is where all the sunshine comes from!
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Opposite the conference venue: Einstein Inside the conference venue: with Suzana Krivokapic and and some sunshine with Virginia Evans Anna Parisi
First of all I must say I was really impressed by the whole event. It was flawlessly organized and all the members of the organizing committee did their best to make the conference a memorable one. For me they are the stars, so my big thanks to Zivka, Zarina, Silvia, Irina, Gergana, Albena (it appears in antialphabetical order :) … The conference programme was carefully planned, many great speakers invited, and it was indeed my great pleasure to meet them and listen to their interesting presentation. Let me just mention Lilia Savova (Indiana University of Pennsylvania), Terry Lamb (University of Sheffield), Virginia Evans (Express Publishing), Paul Davies (Pilgrims), Desmond Thomas (University of Essex), Zarina Markova (SouthWest University, Bulgaria), Anna Parisi (SEETA President)… Probably the biggest source of enlightenment for me was indeed the plenary given by Desmond, Zarina and Anna: ‘Making the most of your teaching context: SEETA Research Project’.
Frankly speaking, I always thought nobody was interested in classroombased
research done by teachers. I always thought teachers are too busy teaching. I always thought teachers should be given support to do research. And there and then, during this plenary, I realised there is a project organized for teachers interested in research. I realized the project is aimed at encouraging teachers to become active researchers. It was love at second sight! The second sight because when I first heard about the project, a couple of months before the conference, it appeared I was too late to join the first stage, which was launched in September 2014. Then and there in Sofia I was told they would repeat the first set of webinars and I realised I was not too late to join in! (For those like me, you can find further information and the
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recordings of the webinars in the SEETA Research area at www.seeta.eu ) Then and there in Sofia I realised ‘THOSE WHO TEACH, CAN!!!’ I wouldn’t like to finish this piece of writing without mentioning the social side of the conference. I still smile when I think about all the nice people I met, like my travel companion Suzana from Montenegro, Marta Bujakowska from IATEFL POLAND, Biljana from Ohrid from Macedonia and many more. I still smile when I think about the dinner for the official representatives at Bori Mechkata! What a great place and what fabulous atmosphere! I would definitely always recommend such a place for networking! And how not to mention the second night event, when I realized that Bulgarian teachers are excellent dancers, as well! I would also like to take this opportunity to praise Bulgarian publishers! Frankly speaking, I don’t think I have ever seen more generous and more delicious donations (both in quality and quantity)!
At Bori Mechkata with Suzana and Gergana The second night: Kolo
To conclude, the conference was rich in ideas and actions. The whole atmosphere was so relaxing and pleasant and yet thoughtprovoking. I had the feeling that was not my first time in Bulgaria, I felt like I was there to meet some old friends. That is exactly what I intend to do, attend the conference again and meet my oldnew friends.
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***** Snežana Filipović has graduated from the Faculty of Philology, Belgrade University. She has been teaching English for over 20 years. Her interests include testing and assessment, teacher development, learner autonomy and enhancing creativity in the classroom. *I certify that I have the right to publish these photos.
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TH REPORT ON THE 24 IATEFL POLAND CONFERENCE
Emeše Both, Grammar School Senta, Serbia Key words : conference, representative, Poland
th th th The 24 IATEFL POLAND CONFERENCE was held in Kraków between 18 and 20
September. The biggest and the most spectacular gathering of English teachers in Poland hosted approximately 1000 participants this year again which is absolutely not surprising considering the fact that Poland is famous for its hospitality and excellent conferences. The main topic of the programme focused on quality teaching and learning and it included a variety of plenary sessions, talks, workshops and live lessons. The preconference events already suggested that the three days coming would be well worth the time and energy. I didn’t prove wrong. During the conference we had the chance to hear outstanding teacher trainers, such as professor David Little, Péter Medgyes, Jamie Keddie, Steve TayloreKnowles, Gareth Davies and Hugh Dellar , just to mention a few. Studying the programme I realised many times that it was going to be really difficult to choose which talk or workshop to attend, which is not surprising as very often there were even 15 of them running at the same time. Since my main field of interest is teaching teenagers and adults I focused my attention on these topics. That is how I ended up running from one workshop to the other having only a quick coffee and chat with colleagues in the breaks. It could also happen that there was a queue in front of one or other lecture hall. People were waiting hoping that they could grab a seat and enjoy a talk. An example of this was Gareth Davies ’s presentation on revolutionising listening skills, or Jamie Keddie ’s workshop on teachers as storytellers. The hall was also full when Bethany Cagnol told us how to think outside the box and gave us some quirky ideas for the classroom. I also enjoyed Yuri Stulov ’s workshop who showed the audience how to use acting strategies in teaching English. My workshop on teaching vocabulary was scheduled for the last day and I was happy to have a cooperative and enthusiastic audience. One of the funniest parts was the quiz named “The Weakest IATEFL Link” hosted by Peter Whiley who took on the role of Anne Robinson and challenged the contestants with tricky
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questions, which they, more often than not, could answer. The reward for the „strongest link” was really motivating: a teacher refresher course in Britain. This wasn’t the only prize the participants could win. At the end of the third day lots of valuable prizes (from cute cushions through useful books to free attendance at different conferences) were delivered to the lucky ones . Beside the ”working part”, the organisers cared for the entertainment and relaxation of the participants, as well. The first day ended with a gala supper where all the representatives of IATEFL Poland and its partner organisations were present and we spent a beautiful evening at the Jagellonian University’s Collegium Maius. At the end of the second day the participants had the chance to enjoy an unforgettable evening in the company of the legend of the Polish music scene Stanislaw Soyka. Given that the conference started at 9 o’clock in the morning and finished at 7p.m. every day, we were quite exhausted by the end of the day, which didn’t prevent us from taking part in these relaxing and delightful evening activities. We could even grab some time to take pleasure in a walk in the centre of the atmospheric Kraków. Friendships are formed very easily on these occasions, so most of the participants went home with a number of email addresses, not to mention the handy activities and useful ideas, in their pockets. I am truly grateful for the opportunity to attend the 24th IATEFL Poland Conference and it was a great honour to represent ELTA Serbia there. ***** Emeše Both graduated from the Faculty of Philosophy in Novi Sad, Serbia in 2001. She passed the CELTA course in Budapest in 2015 and finished the Trainer Development Course in Belgrade the same year. She has been working as an English teacher in the Grammar School Senta and is also an ECL oral examiner. She has recently become an ELTA coordinator.
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TH THE 49 ANNUAL INTERNATIONAL IATEFL CONFERENCE AND EXHIBITION IN MANCHESTER FROM 11 TO 14 APRIL 2015
Vladimir Široki, Novi Sad, Serbia Key words: representative, conference, IATEFL, associates
IATEFL is undoubtedly one of the largest and most dynamic ELT communities in the world. This association has its international conference once a year. This year the City of Manchester th hosted the 49 IATEFL Conference.
As a member of ELTA Serbia and a member of its Board, I was given a great opportunity to represent our association at the IATEFL conference. The conference unofficially started with Preconference events and Associates’ Day on 10 April. The conference itself lasted from 11 to 14 April. The Associates’ Day was a chance for representatives of the Teaching Associations (TAs) to get together and discuss matters of common concern. It was also a great chance to meet old friends and colleagues and make new friends from all corners of the world. The Organizing Committee planned several useful presentations for the representatives of the associations. Caroline Moore and Marjorie Rosenberg’s presentation How to use IATEFL online events to support your members was a neat overview of the previous web conferences and satellite events supported by IATEFL. George Pickering, IATEFL SIG Representative, held a presentation New IATEFL training scheme where we were acquainted with IATEFL in numbers and a forthcoming online course for the TAs. Mr Pickering announced the launch of a 10week course for the representative of the TAs with the following topics: leadership and management style, managing teams, strategic planning and membership. IATEFL Patron David Crystal, OBE, gave an interesting presentation World Englishes: Where next? This presentation was “the accent on accents” since David Crystal shared witty and fascinating facts about the myriad ways in which English is spoken. We were acquainted with an
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entertaining yet expert book about accents You Say Potato and we were encouraged to visit the website yousaypotato.net supported by Panmacmillan. The conference started on 11 April. The participants enjoyed five plenary sessions and over 500 sessions consisting of talks, workshops, posters, forums, SIG open forums and more. At this year’s conference there were five plenary sessions presented by the following speakers: Ann Cotton, Carol Ann Duffy, Joy Egbert, Donald Freeman and Harry Kuchah. The title of Donald Freeman’s talk was Frozen in thought? How we think and what we do in ELT. Donald Freeman pointed out that English language teaching is full of ideas such as “teachers have to or ought to do”. We are burdened with numerous challenges – from national policies and standards for teaching to administrative procedures and daytoday work in ELT classrooms. He refers to this process as being “frozen in thought”. Teaching today is characterized with myths – common beliefs that serve a purpose and they are not right or wrong. These myths include the following: (1) the myth of direct casuality, (2) the myth of sole responsibility, and (3) the myth of proficiency as the goal. Thus the field of ELT has become immobilized in a critical sense by these ideas and what they mean for what we do as teachers and teacher educators. The former ELTA President, Radmila Popović, had an interesting workshop The artsy side of . She reminded us of the possibility to observe language teaching through the lens of teaching art. We may consider teaching in two ways: Teaching is an Art, and Teaching is a Science. The truly effective teacher, the one who can generate learning in the classroom, will be both a good scientist and an imaginative artist. Teaching artistic work is not just about teaching students to make art; it is about engaging students as artists who develop the original work and also develop new ways to create art. Radmila Popovic singled out three ranges of teaching: (1) structured practice vs. free application, (2) creative constraints vs. open ended, and (3) fragmentary vs. finished work. The current ELTA President, Olja Milošević, won International House John Haycraft Classroom Exploration Scholarship. The title of her talk was Understanding group dynamics in the English classroom. Olja Milošević presented findings of a smallscale research carried out in two high school groups to discover ways that can facilitate creating a collaborative atmosphere. The above overview is just a tiny drop of numerous events, presentations and exhibitions at this year’s IATEFL Conference.
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th The jubilee 50 Annual International IATEFL Conference will take place in Birmingham next
year. **** Vladimir Široki graduated from the Faculty of Philosophy in Novi Sad, Serbia in 2005. He defended his MA thesis in English Language and Linguistics at the same faculty. In 2010 he passed the CELTA course in Budapest, Hungary. He is currently employed in a primary school in Novi Sad (teaching children aged between 8 and 15). He also instructs candidates in internationally recognised exams (IELTS, FCE, CAE, BEC). He was a member of ELTA Board between 2011 and 2015.
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TEPT Course Epiphany Tanja Milunović, Primary School Dragan Lukić , Belgrade, Serbia English Teacher Professional Development Distance Learning Program supported by University of Oregon and Bureau of Educational and Cultural Affairs of the U.S. Department of State
Keywords : eteacher scholarship, professional development, teaching teenagers, learner independence, TEPT, millennials, ABCD objective, PBL
Introduction Having obtained your college degree in Serbia almost never means that you are capable of being a teacher. What is more, years are to come before you excel your teaching abilities. Isaac Asimov once said: ‘’Selfeducation is, I firmly believe, the only kind of education there is”. Ever since I have read this, I have been searching for ways to improve my skills and educate myself to provide my students with the opportunity to look up to me and teach them to do the same by becoming independent learners. Nowadays, more than ever, knowledge is just a click away from us, and teachers shouldn’t miss the opportunity to explore the whole world abundant in successful practices from the comfort of their own home. The ETeacher Scholarship Program is just one among many eyeopening courses created for foreign English language professionals (for program’s eligibility and application
overview
). http://exchanges.state.gov/nonus/program/eteacherscholarshipprogram
visit I
have
been
nominated to enroll in the TEPT (Teaching English to Preteens and Teens) course this spring that trains teachers on how to approach millennials through the studentcentered approach and collaborative Project Based Learning (PBL) that enable them to become independent learners. This 10week blend of theoretical and practical work has been entirely conducted via the Blackboard educational online platform and has indeed been an epiphany for me. The course is Pass/No Pass, and your final score has to be at least 70% in order to receive the Certificate of Completion. Each week you are given reading assignments and two deadlines per week to submit your written work on the provided topics. At the same time, you have to go through the work of your fellow participants and contribute by giving analytical and critical feedback. Both stages should be supported with examples from your own teaching experience. You are advised
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to dedicate about 10 hours per week to the reading assignments, but quite often you will need more than that. Course Scope and Sequence Week 1: Orientation to Blackboard. Understanding & teaching Generation Y. Project work. Week 2: Teambuilding. Projectbased learning essentials. Week 3: Twentyfirst century learning environments. Evaluate published projects. Week 4: Teaching speaking & listening. Lesson planning with goals & objectives. Week 5: Assessment & evaluation. Evaluate published projects. Week 6: Error correction & feedback. Mid term check of the final project. Week 7: Teaching reading & writing. Evaluate published projects. Week 8: Teaching grammar & vocabulary. Use of music & games. Week 9: Learning styles & multiple intelligences. Week 10: Final week of the course! Wrap up in Discussion and submit the final project
I will try to summarize this 10week learning experience by highlighting three most important factors for the successful teaching practice – Millennials and their characteristics, PBL and ABCD Objectives.
Millenials A significant asset of the course is its indepth analysis on how to know your students better. Once the only source of knowledge teacher as a ‘’sage on the stage’’ is now being placed among the wide range of sources. The mindset of the new generations, commonly referred to as Millennials or Gen Y, craves for independence and alternative strategies for learning. These students are techsavvy, kinaesthetic and visual learners who seek customized, entertaining and relevant tasks along with the instant and constant feedback. Having this in mind, it is obvious that the abovementioned role of teacher and Comenius’s educational system have to undergo significant changes if we are to nurture meaningful learning values and avoid lack of interest in our students. The teacher is to be a mediator and guide more than a preacher, and teachercentred approach is being replaced with the studentcentred
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one. It is difficult to alter the whole system, but what we can certainly do is to bear in mind characteristics of our students and at least try to give them the access to meaningful, relevant, entertaining and longlasting learning and opportunities to become more independent through projects. Project Based Learning Projects are what enable students to activate their knowledge and apply it without being dependent on their teacher. However, not all projects are beneficial, and not all projects can provide longlasting and functional skills. The common practice is to assign the student a task of presenting a certain topic. Some learners indulge themselves in thorough research. Others paste Wikipedia lines, and all together create a poster or PowerPoint Presentation about the topic, but none of them sees the purpose in it, apart from getting the grade. Projects are more than that. What I realized during the course and after observing several examples of successfully completed projects is that they should live long after the completion of their presentation. They can even change lives (e.g. ecologyrelated topics where students research, collect data, propose solutions, present in front of the school and community members, upload them online, raise awareness and even finding funds to achieve their goals of improving their community or school, take pride in their actions ever after and influence others). eight essential steps that insure effective Project Based Learning: There are 1. Significant content . Planning a project means finding significant content in terms of students’ own lives and interests. Basically, you are to think locally before you move on thinking globally. 2. A Need to Know. In order to achieve this in students, the teacher should awaken their curiosity with a topicrelated ‘’entry event’’ (e.g. a video, picture, discussion, dialogue, recent event, etc.) that will make them want to find out more about the issue and engage themselves in the matter. 3. A Driving Question . This is the heart of the project that captures the purpose of the PBL itself. It should be thoughtprovocative, openended and problem/ solving. A printable tool known
as
Tubric
might
help
you
while
developing
this
step
https://sites.udel.edu/sfi2015/files/2015/02/FreeBIE_Tubriczq93r6.pdf .
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4. Student Voice and Choice. The teacher could be a guide providing resources and a list of ideas, and students will choose, modify, if necessary, and create a product of their own choice. st 5. 21 Century Skills. It is immensely important for the students to activate collaboration,
communication, critical thinking and the use of technology so that they would keep up the pace with the modern and contemporary world outside the classroom. 6. Inquiry and Innovation. This is a step students are to undertake in order to find out more about the task and reach a conclusion and find a solution of their own. 7. Feedback and Revision. The teacher should provide students with the regular comments on their progress so that they could proceed with the project as intended. 8. Publicly Presented Project. This stage highlights the importance of their work and inviting family, friends, teachers, representatives of the community and even business and government representatives helps students take the task seriously and try their best.
ABCD Objectives This is probably the most valuable revelation of the course that is applicable and desirable in all teaching contexts and during the entire teaching practice. Having an ABCD objective for each lesson and even each activity, helps both students and teachers to focus, comprehend, do and evaluate the task. The beginner students AUDIENCE ( Who are your learners?): BEHAVIOUR (What do you want them to do?): will be able to classify words into 3 categories (nouns, verbs, adjectives) CONDITION (What will you provide for them to do the task?): given the instruction, words on the board and handout with the examples DEGREE ( How will you assess their product?): with 90% accuracy. This would be just an example of the ABCD model for the single activity, but following the same principle the model is applicable to the whole lesson or project (e.g. Audience : The intermediate students Behaviour : will be able to present solutions for improving the park in front
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of the audience Condition : having seen and photographed the current state of it Degree : by proposing at least 5 doable ways for improvement).
Conclusion Having been a devoted and eager learner, I have managed to obtain the TEPT course Certificate of Completion with the highest score, but as already mentioned at the beginning of the article this only means I have yet to learn and apply gained knowledge in the practice. In the time being, I will keep on implementing these three steps that lead towards meaningful and relevant teaching practice. PBL equips our students with the skills that enable them to be become independent learners and educate themselves, as Asimov pointed out. Knowing your students is crucial if we are to engage them in the PBL and project along each activity should be focused through ABCD objectives.
References : ●
Buck Larmer, J. and Mergendoller J. 2012 8 Essentials for ProjectBased Learning. Institute, ASCD
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Reilly, P. 2012 Understanding and Teaching Generation Y . English Teaching Forum, Volume 50, Number 1
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Smaldino, S.E., Lowther, D.L., and Russell, J.D. 2012 Instructional technology and media for learning (10th ed.). Upper Saddle River, NJ, Prentice Hall.
***** Tanja Milunović has graduated from the Faculty of Philology and Arts at the University of Kragujevac and gained her MA in 2011. Pursuit of knowledge and contagious geeky enthusiasm are traits she wants to awaken in students. Currently, she is working in the primary school ‘’Dragan Lukić’’ in Belgrade and at The English Access Microscholarship Program, and she is having a whale of time.
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Contemporary Approaches to the English Language Teaching Jana Živanović, Faculty of Philology, University of Belgrade, Serbia
Abstract: With more than a billion speakers worldwide, the English language has become a powerful tool for interaction and a means for prosperity. This paper will elaborate on different reasons political, economic, social, educational and cultural for learning English and focus on the ways of promoting globalmindedness among students. Comparing modern and traditional methods, I will encourage my fellows to improve the quality of teaching by experimenting with different contemporary techniques. Further, I will touch upon the benefits of using technology in the classroom. Disregarding their shortcomings, smartphones and tablets are teachingfriendly and although it may be potentially hazardous, the Internet certainly is an unlimited source of information. Step outside the center of the classroom, think outside the box and give students voice. Let them feel the language and let them become aware of their ability to command it. I believe they are brilliant minds with strong predisposition to become global citizens and import significant changes the world will benefit from. Key words: language, teaching, culture, technology, digital immigrants, digital natives
Introduction The Importance of Knowing English Today, an established billion or more people speak some English. Age border for learning is getting lower and lower. When my generation was in elementary school, we began with English classes at the age of 11. Now 7yearold children are active learners. They do not know how to read or write, but if you show them an apple and ask “What is this?”, they can tell you “This is an apple.”
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According to Crystal, about 400 million people have learned English as a first or native language. Those are people living in socalled “Inner Circle” countries such as the US, the UK, Ireland, Canada, Australia and New Zealand, where it is dominant as the language of education and government. Then we have “Outer Circle” countries – India, Pakistan, and Jamaica – where populations have learnt English as a second language and have developed their own varieties. That is why I have said that people speak some English and that is what Crystal referred to as “Englishes”. Finally, from 500 million to one billion speakers live in China, Turkey and the UAE which are known as “Expanding Circle” countries. Since English does not have an official function there, it is mainly used by those who do not share the same mother tongue. This is an instance of studying English as a foreign or international language due to the importance of English as a lingua franca or link language for education, employment, social interaction, entertainment, travel, science, technology etc. So, if we compare these figures, there are 3 times as many nonnative speakers as there are native speakers of English. If this trend continues, and it is likely to, in a couple of years there will be 2 billion speakers talking to each other in English. The question is will our students be a part of that conversation?
Comparing two different ages of teaching
th st Picture 1: Education in the 20 century Picture 2: Education in the 21 century
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If we take a look at these two pictures, we can see they do have something in common. Students are sitting in rows in both of them; they keep quiet, with the teacher in the centre of the classroom captured from different perspectives. Sad but true, we can hardly find any sign that they are taken in two different centuries. I remember being a moderator at the American Corner for the Conversation Hour with teenagers. It is unbelievable what a range of topics they were interested to talk about. When I asked them what bothered them most about their English classes at school, they all agreed it was grammar and the way of examining. One student added: “My teacher asks me how Present Perfect is built. I don’t know. I don’t build tenses, I use them. I have used them properly so far, is it not enough?” Then I posed myself the same question – is it not sufficient, and even successful, for a 15year old student with a limited exposure to 2 hours of English per week at school to speak the foreign language fluently and properly? On the other hand, if that same student knew how to “build” the tense, would that be a guarantee they would be able to use it? I studied French for ten years; I am a false beginner today. All I can do is read, which does not always mean I understand it. At school I developed Pavlov’s reflex for words. If you told me “milk” in French, I could give you its equivalent in English, or if you told me “bread” in English, I could give you its equivalent in French. I have a whole table of “formulas” regarding grammar. But this string of unconnected words and grammar translated into math did not contribute to my automation of French. And, in an everyday communication, you would not expect from me to think for five seconds before each reply, unless I had a sort of mental disorder. It would be as if a driver pulled a break after every 50 meters. You would probably want to get out of such a car. The same is in a conversation – the other speakers want to escape such a talk. I believed teachers took advantage of tablets, mobile phones, interactive boards and children’s actual interest in this equipment. I went to a primary school for teaching practice and what I saw surprised me. There was a text about four great cities in the world. The teacher asked them to open the book and played the CD. Students were looking at the text with pens in their hands and followed it, while the voice on the tape was simultaneously reading the text. I got slightly confused – did they read or listen to the text? Or were they just daydreaming for the entire five minutes? Afterwards, they read the text out loud and answered the questions which required to
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be visually found in the text, not to be understood from the text. And there is an exclamation th mark – they are 7 grade!
I can only imagine what it was like for those kids who started stirring, teasing each other and some were even sent to their class teacher because of disturbing the class. Did they really deserve to be punished? Were they really hyperactive? Or just simply – bored? I am unfortunately too old to behave in such a manner, but instead of that I pondered over how the quality of class could have been improved. The traditional method is, without a doubt, the easiest way, but is it the best one? Does it meet the needs of today’s children?
Technology Our students have changed radically and they are not the people our educational system was designed to teach. Today’s students represent the first generation to grow up with the new technology, spending much of their time surrounded by laptops, cell phones and other toys of digital age. As a result of the environment, students think and process information differently. Net generation or Digital generation are just some of the terms describing “new” learners. But a term “digital native” coined by Marc Prensky in 2001 is emerging as the most useful designation, while the “digital immigrant” has become a relic of previous time. They are oldworld settlers who have immigrated to the digital world. After a bloodless conflict fought with iPhones instead of bullets, the war between the natives and the immigrants is ending. And you can already anticipate who is winning – the natives. The main distinction between these two species is that, no matter how hard immigrants tried to adapt to their environment, they always retain, metaphysically speaking, their “accent”. One example of the accent I personally prefer is the need to print out a document in order to edit it, instead of doing it on the screen. Now, why is this important for teaching? Apart from being connoisseurs of technology, digital natives are used to receiving information very fast from multiple sources, unlike digital immigrants who prefer single tasks and controlled release of information. Digital immigrants do not believe students can learn successfully while watching TV or listening to music. They do not consider learning should be fun.
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The fact is that children and young adolescents sitting in their classes are used to instantaneity of downloaded music, library on their laptops, instant messaging. They have little patience for stepbystep instructions. Digital immigrant teachers assume that learners are the same as they have always been and that the same methods that worked for the teachers when they were students will work for their students now. But this is a typical example of logical fallacy “Appeal to tradition”, since this assumption is no longer valid. I am not saying that digital natives cannot live, learn and function without technology or that using technology equals to good teaching. Quite opposite, there is socalled “the cult of the amateur”, which more often than not can undermine expertise, course coherence and learning principles. This means that not every online dictionary is a good dictionary and that one can encounter a string of random lessons on the Internet. Or, the worst case scenario that can happen to students is that they use data from noncredible sources. Some scientists may state that Google has negative effects on our memory, so that we recall place where we found something, rather than the content itself. However, I would like you to bear in mind that an educated man is not someone who has all the knowledge, but who knows where to look for it. But what is essential is that teachers nowadays have to learn to communicate in the language and style of their students. As far as content is concerned, there are two parts: one including “traditional curriculum”, i.e. reading, writing, etc. and the other comprising the ethics, politics, sociology, etc. Speaking of content, language teaching is culture teaching and what usually happens is that the emphasis is put on the former. We as teachers need to go beyond monitoring linguistic production in the classroom and become aware of processes of intercultural mediation. Culture and communication are inseparable, because culture not only dictates who talks to whom, about what and how the communication proceeds, but also helps determining the way people encode messages. I believe there is a natural tendency in all countries, not only in mine, to cherish their own culture and mother tongue. Teachers often face critiques due to the overuse of English. I suppose it comes from the fear of neglecting one’s own mother tongue and culture for the sake of getting acquainted with others. That is why I highlight that the aim of teaching culture is to increase students’ awareness and develop curiosity both towards the target culture and their own and to help them compare cultures. Let us make students aware that there are no such things as superior or inferior cultures, but that people within the target culture differ as well.
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Conclusion Our world has changed, but disappointingly enough, our schools have not. What our educators must combat and eradicate are stereotypes. So, to provide a different perspective, teachers should use comparison and identify the common ground between cultures. But, before they venture into other territories, students need to explore their own. Beginning a foreign language, students want to feel, touch, smell, or to see the foreign peoples, not just hear the language. With 45 minutes twice a week we must make a cultural island out of the classroom. Bring realia – pictures, maps, whatever works for your students to develop the mental image of the culture. Even better – invite guest speakers who will share their experiences of their country. Or, if all of this fails, set the scene. Students may be in a restaurant expected to order a meal. You can ask them to roleplay some piece of literary work, or to prepare a debate. We can all give them invaluable experience of negotiating ideas and teach them how to persuade others to take their sides. So, if we, as immigrants, want to teach natives, it is high time we changed our perspective. As the Nike motto of the digital native generation says – Just do it! References: 1. http://www.slideshare.net/TransparentLanguage/theimportanceofglobalmindednessin education 2. http://www.culturaldiplomacy.org/academy/pdf/research/books/nation_branding/English_ As_A_Global_Language__David_Crystal.pdf 3. http://www.bedigital.fr/digitalnativesdigitalimmigrants.asp 4. http://edition.cnn.com/2012/12/04/business/digitalnativeprensky/ ***** Jana Živanović has graduated from the English language department at the Faculty of Philology, University of Belgrade. As her passion is teaching, she volunteered at the Faculty of Mechanical Engineering in April 2014. She is a coauthor of an anthology of poetry and prose White City Wordsmiths. Apart from this, she revels in translating for the project Translator’s Heart and dancing salsa.
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Lesson Plan – Present Simple Tense and Food Valentina Nikolovski, Studio for foreign languages “Matilda”, Serbia Speaking and grammar lesson Key words: lesson plan, Present Simple Tense, speaking, grammar, food words, I like, I don`t like, Do you like, word games
Time length of the lesson : 45 min. rd Age/level : 89 years of age, 3 grade children, although it is possible to adapt the lesson for
even younger pupils Goals/ objectives : 1) Ss will be able to use the learned vocabulary actively 2) Stronger classes will be able to recognize these words in written form 3) Ss will be able to say what food they like or don’t like and give short positive or negative answers when somebody asks them if they like something or not 4) They will be able to ask somebody if they like something 5) They will be able to say what another person likes or doesn’t like List of materials needed : food flashcards or food word cards (Teacher’s book is usually accompanied by flashcards of the vocabulary connected to the units from student’s book; in case you don’t have original FC you can use pictures from magazines or food catalogues, you can download it or make your own word cards. When I don’t have much time, or when the technology fails, I write the words in big letters on pieces of paper. There are a lot of websites with flashcards generators. I made the attached word cards using one of them ) ( http://www.brendenisteaching.com/gen/
chicken
meat
tomato
rice
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lemon
fish
juice
ice cream
cherry
carrot
pie
strawberry
orange
apple
salad
chocolate
The Scheme of the lesson 1) Revision of vocabulary (5 min) 2) Introducing a new construction (5min) 3) Practicing the new construction through a game (10 min) 4) Question forms, short answers (15) 5) Reporting the results of their interviews (10 min) Stages of the lesson
The description
Time
Step 1 Revision of the Activity – Flying flashcards : take one flashcard and 5 min vocabulary
learned
previous classes
in rotate it in front of the students as quickly as possible but still slowly enough so that they can take a glimpse of it. They need to tell you what it is. They can shout it all together – giving weaker students confidence to participate. For stronger classes, or those classes who practiced this vocabulary with written words, you will use word cards. With them you can do Bit by bit activity – cover a word with a piece of paper and uncover the word only a letter by letter.
Step 2 – introducing the Teacher says what he/she likes and doesn’t like. E.g . I 5 min construction by giving your like apples but I don’t like oranges. Then asks a few own example
students what their favourite and least favourite food is, giving them opportunity to use the construction I like….but I don’t like … and thus introducing the next activity.
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Step 3 – playing a game and Tell the Ss that they are going to play a game in which 10 practicing a new construction
they can lie – they can say what they like or don’t like min but it doesn’t have to be true. Play Chain game – One student says I like A, but I don’t like B. Next student repeats the last part of his/her sentence but using positive form and adds negative form using another word, e.g. I like B, but I don’t like C. Next says I like C, but I don’t like D … These letters are just symbols of S’s own examples of food words. Don’t let them repeat the words. With very large classes I would divide them in teams of 810 students, thus making smaller groups, and every group plays its own chain game. rd For stronger students, you can introduce 3 person
singular even at this stage by playing the same game in a different way. You say I like A . Next S says about you and adds about him/herself She likes A, but I like B . Next says He/she likes B, but I like C… Step 4 – question forms, short Divide Ss in pairs. Tell them to make a list of 5 food answers
5
+
items, and put them in a table like this. Draw it on the 10 board for them to copy but they should put in their min own examples. Column I is for their answers and column My partner for their partner (they can write a name of their partner) Food or drinks
I
Tomato
X
My partner
Rice
Milk
Water
X
X
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Ice cream
X
They need to interview their partners and fill in the table by putting a tick if the answer is positive or a cross if the answer is negative. Give them an example by asking one of them something from your list, e.g . Do you like tomatoes ? And elicit answers Yes, I do./No, I don’t . For weaker classes it is a good
idea to write this question on the board as well as answers as a model for them. If you happen to have odd number of students in your class, you can take part in this game and make one of them your partner. Step 5 – reporting the results Ss need to tell you about their partners using the 10 of their interviews
information they gathered and compare their partners min to themselves. Give them your own example as a model, e.g. I like rice, but he doesn’t like rice. Or I like rice but he likes tomatoes . Or if you think that they
rd need more practice with 3 person singular, they can
just tell you about their partners, the model being e.g. He likes tomatoes, but he doesn’t like rice… N.B . If the classes are really big, there is not enough time for everyone to report about their partners so you can give them for homework to write about their partners on a separate piece of papers. If they agree you can even put up their work on the notice board for others to see them and read. Measuring S’s success: You can go round the class while they are doing the activity in pairs and check if they are using English only. Also, this is the time when it is possible they will ask you some questions about what they are not sure of. If some of them are struggling with the
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constructions, give extra examples or ask some of them to explain the critical points to the others. By doing this, they will have the chance of hearing the explanation from the point of view of their peers. In my opinion, we can see how successful they are in acquiring these constructions form their reports and later on it will be obvious from the sentences they write for their homework. If all the sentences are correct, you can award them with special stickers, for example. ***** Valentina Nikolovski graduated from Belgrade University, Faculty of Filology in 2003. She has been working as an English teacher in Studio for foreign languages “Matilda” since 2005 teaching different levels of children and adults. She is especially interested in the English teaching methodology for young learners and continual professional development. She has just completed an online course on teaching English to young learners from the University of Oregon. You may contact her at missmitic@yahoo.co.uk
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Lesson Plan Revising vocabulary and instructions in English with a PowerPoint Mix Nevena Stoilkov, English teacher at primary school “Milisav Nikolić”, Boževac, Serbia
Key Words: young learners, teaching material, coloring, following instructions in English, PP Mix presentation
Short description: Teacher prepares a Powerpoint Mix presentation containing pictures, quizzes and audio for students to follow throughout the class and do the exercises individually or in groups. Learning outcomes: 1. Students are able to name colours, animals and school objects in English 2. Students can connect written words and the objects the words represent 3. Students successfully follow instructions in English Teaching materials: Laptop, Power Point Mix presentation, printed pictures of a clown, crayons, tempera, bottle caps, wool, cardboard Time : 80 minutes Beginning the lesson (3 minutes): Teacher informs students that they will practice vocabulary (animals, school objects, parts of the face) and following instructions in English.
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Main part of the lesson: Activity 1 (15 minutes) Step 1 Students are presented with 6 pictures (animals, school objects). T asks each student „What is this?“ pointing to a picture, and they answer in English (a dog/a cat/a pencilcase/a chair/a horse/a rubber). After giving the right answers, T also points out that they should remember the pictures for the next exercise.
Step 2 In the next exercise, students work in groups. They are now presented with „true or false“ quiz. T reads them a sentence and they are expected to say if the sentence is true or false, after consulting with all the members of the group (two sentences about the colors of the pictures from the previous exerciseThe horse is black/The chair is yellow).
Step 3 After giving all the correct answers, T shows them the following slides with a multiple choice quiz. Here, they should continue the sentences so they describe the pictures from the beginning
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of the activity. T reads the sentences and possible answers, and students work together to come to the correct answer. There are 4 sentences. ( The rubber is green red and blue/ The dog is brown black/ The cat is white black brown/ The pencil case is blue pink purple )
After giving all the correct answers, we move to the next activity. Activity 2 (5 minutes) Step 1 In this activity, students practice parts of the face. The slide shows pictures of nose, ears, eyes, mouth, hair and face. They listen to the audio uploaded to the presentation which tells them which picture they should point to ( Audio: Point to the nose/eyes/ears/hair/face/mouth ). Each student points to one picture. If a student isn’t sure which picture to point to, other students help them to do so.
Step 2 When they successfully point to all of the pictures, we move to the next exercise. On the following slide, students are presented with the same set of pictures of the parts of the face, but now words are added to the slide. Their task is to connect all the pictures with the correct words. If difficulties occur, let students name the pictures again and then connect them with the correct
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words in English (each students connects one picture with a word). While connecting, T should help them since they are not skilled enough to do it by themselves.
Activity 3 (15 minutes) Step 1 The next slide shows a picture of a clown with an uploaded audio – instructions in English, concerning parts of the face. Students listen to the audio and follow the instruction ( Audio: Touch your hair/Open your mouth/Touch your nose/Touch your eyes/Close your eyes/Close your mouth/Touch your ears/Touch your mouth/Open your eyes/Touch your face ).
Step 2 Then every student is provided with a picture of the clown. Now, the students listen to the audio where the clown describes itself. The students should listen and colour their picture the same way as the clown described. They should all have crayons for this exercise. ( Audio instructions: My eyes are blue./My ears are orange./My hair is brown./My face is yellow/My nose is pink/My mouth is red )
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Step 3 In the next slide, the clown describes itself, but makes mistakes in some of the sentences. If the sentence is true, the students should say „yes“, and if it is not, they should say „no“. When the sentence is incorrect, they should also correct the mistake by telling the correct form of the sentence. (Audio: My hair is black /My face is pink /My mouth is red /My nose is pink /My eyes are blue/My ears are yellow) Activity 4 (30 minutes) In the last activity, students make a mask of tempera, bottle caps, wool, glue and cardboard. When they finish, they should all describe their mask like the clown described itself. T plays music which was uploaded to the PPP.
Ending the lesson (10 minutes) Students present their masks and make an exhibition. T praises their work.
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***** Nevena Stoilkov has graduated from University of Kragujevac, Serbia in 2011. She has worked as an English teacher since 2011. She is interested in teaching English to young learners and working with children of challenging behavior. *I certify that I have the right to publish these photos.
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All The World's A Stage Gorica Kostić, P rimary School “Marija Bursać“, Belgrade, Serbia Key words: a cting, miming, Shakespeare, creative show, positive energy, rhymes, dancers, enthusiasm, music, outside classroom, improving English
Can I act? Can I mime? Can I sing? Can I say a rhyme by heart? These are the questions pupils ask themselves day in day out. With these dilemmas in mind, they come to classes, and they face the books, tiny letters, enormous paragraphs, stock pictures and suffocating air in the classroom. These are the images of conventional teaching. On Thursday, 8th May 2014 in the indoor venue at Sports Centre “OlimpZvezdara” an extraordinary performance “Shakespeare at Olimp” was held. This was a creative show made by hardworking, diligent kids and their teacher me. That was a unique programme which was held in remembrance of the 450 years from the birth of one of the greatest writers and dramatists in the world – William Shakespeare. Together with him, we entered a dream: two fencers (children) fought for life, for success, for happiness, for diligence. This was a chance for all kids who wanted to show their talents in acting, saying a chant, dancing, sports and singing. The audience was thrilled and showed their respect by applauding to each of the various parts of the plays and at the same time they praised the engagement of all participants. It is not difficult to imagine this, but pictures show more than the words. If you had been there, you would have felt the positive energy that was given to us by those ‘small’ but ‘great’ artists. There are two reasons why the children were put into the live situation. Firstly they meet for the first time with Middle English, with the rhymes that are not the contemporary text. Secondly, they act them out amazed that they succeeded, they were able to, they did it! But it was not easy to start. The initial idea was to learn the sonnets in Serbian, the roles of famous names as Romeo and Juliet or in “Seven Ages of Man”, as well as less famous but engaging roles of a master and his servant who talked through mimes, gestures, and funny pitch of the voice in “Comedy of Errors”. They acted and entertained even those who poorly speak and understand English. They “saw” that life changes in front of their eyes. A man gets older and dies sans teeth, sans eyes, sans taste, sans anything. When they made the first step, I asked them who would learn the same lines in English. It went to show that many students required to learn lines in English. The small ones even learned the lines which contained grammatical
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structures and tenses that they have not learned yet, but were funny or romantic. They didn’t even notice it was Present Perfect Tense or Causative Have. The seven grader who used to interrupt each class with yelling, laughing, strolling to and from opened the performance with: “To be or not to be…” having been explained that his act was to be the highlight of the event. He has always wanted to draw attention and he did it but this time it was positive. The audience looked at him, greeted him and praised his actions. “Teacher, teacher, I want to be a fool”, said one 9 yearold boy who never asked anything. I told him OK, and he bought an expensive dress for the fool. We all expected he would be unbearable. But he sat in the center of the stage without moving just watching everything. After the show, he started to bring his books regularly to the class, write, draw, sing he even came out to the board to write some words. The same happened with six dancers in “The Black Nag” and the girl and the boy gymnast. After the show, they improved their English. I told them that the importance of Shakespeare was in the poetry of his language, in his talent for music, as well as in the balance of his ideas and the structural antitheses. In his plays, I told them, Shakespeare demonstrated human virtues and flaws, psychic states of all human beings, having built the gallery of unforgettable characters and universal human characteristics. Two girls told me: “Ok, then, we’’ll show you Shakespeare without words, with cups“. In short, by moving the cups and tapping them against the desk they showed anger, fear, amazement, vanity in 40 seconds. The last but not the least, Shakespeare respected love saying that love is not the toy of time, it does not change, it is eternal till the Judgment Day. This was a particularly strong idea for my students as Shakespeare quoted: “If it is an error prove to me, or I never wrote anything nor man loved!” With great enthusiasm, energy and wish to show learned language outside the classroom, my students flourish their sunny age of their life. Although it is a short age of them, it is full of songs, rhymes, laughter, happiness, music and movements. I feel I can transmit the feeling that each generation has its own trait, and the next one brings something new. But each generation has students who would always remember the childhood by the tiny role in the big performance because, after all, the whole world is a stage where each man has its role. Why not in your classroom? Here I enclose the link with photos and movies. If you want to publish some, you can choose from here: https://www.dropbox.com/sh/tfjr7lx3xjgwx72/AAAGOovoHhDAjAoHbJmEEDdYa?dl=0
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***** Gorica Kostić has been to ELTA Conferences three times: at Sava Center in Belgrade, at The Conference in Novi Sad – (English Book awarded her to go to this Conference as the second prize for a critic: Project on Project), and the last one this year. She graduated from the Faculty of Philology in Belgrade, Serbia. She works at Primary School “Marija Bursać”, Belgrade. As she has been working for years with children from 7 to 14, she has mingled with the gallery of characters, trying to meet their needs, create new strategies, support children with special educational needs and develop an inclusive learning approach without labeling them. She has passed the training for “Forum Theatre” that belonged to the “Programme for Prevention of Violence in Schools”, and successfully trained several generations of kids and together with them had performances being invited by the UNICEF and UNODC. She also conducted the “Program for Empowerment of Families” supported by American Educational Program. She passed the training “Socially Responsible Theatre”, too.
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The character of Candace Compson in the novel ’’The Sound and the Fury” Tatjana Gojković, ”L.L.A.” Center, Novi Sad, Serbia Key words: decline, disintegration, sin, conflicts, moral
”To me she was the beautiful one, she was my heart’s darling. That’s what I wrote the book about and I used the tools which seemed to me the proper tools to try to tell, try to draw the picture of Caddy.” ~ William Faulkner
The primary story being told in ”The Sound and the Fury” is the decline of the Compson family. The novel tells what happens to the last generation of Compsons. The unsuccessful marriage of Mr. and Mrs. Compson is a nucleus of disintegration underlying the more tragic failures of their children. One of Mr. and Mrs. Compson’s children is Candace or Caddy. The central event of ”The Sound and the Fury” is Candace’s (Caddy’s) loss of virginity which happened during her affair with Dalton Ames. It is her ’sin’, her breach of ethics or contract, her act of bringing the outside world within the Compson family pattern. Faulkner had constructed the novel upon a successive retelling of a single story from four different points of view. In the first three cases, we are within the minds of the three Compson brothers – Benjy, Quentin, and Jason, in that order and adjust to their perspective upon the story and upon the truth of it as each sees it, and the character of their sister since she has no section of her own. The psychological troubles of the Compson children are closely related to environmental conditions, but the relationships, remain symbolic. Faulkner never tries to show how much conditions actually shape the early lives of the children. He illustrates personality differences
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and conflicting points of view as if they had always existed and were only magnified by particular circumstances. Mr. Compson is an intelligent and sporadically affectionate but weak and selfish man who seeks in alcohol a refuge from nihilism. Mrs. Compson, a selfish woman who has retreated into hypochondria, gives her children no real affection. She uses her illness as a focal point for selfpity and often as a means to escape or reject her responsibilities. In part, because of lack of support from these parents, their children lead lives of tragedy and waste. The tragedy of Candace is that she sees her family disintegrating, she is unable to help her brothers Quentin and Benjy or their father, is abandoned by the man she loves, becomes extremely promiscuous, marries an unpleasant man to give her baby a legal father; but is divorced by him when he learns of her pregnancy, and finally becomes a high class prostitute who cannot return to her family, which includes her illegitimate daughter. Caddy finds an outlet from family repression in sexual activity, but she is also both a principle and a symbol of social disruption. Our first encounter with the Compson family is in terms of childhood; it is a simple world, from which all decline and decay and breakdown are to begin. For example, the incident that happened while Caddy playing with her brothers in the ’branch’, falls into the mud and stains her drawers, became the basic image from which the whole book originated. The first three sections of the novel are concerned with the three distinct views of Caddy’s ’stain’. Caddy means something different in each case, for Benjy she is the smell of trees; for Quentin honor; and for Jason, money or at least the means of obtaining it. In part four Caddy disappears, though her role in Jason’s conflict with Miss Quentin is quite clearly in the background. The original image of the little girl with the muddy drawers grew into the rich and complex conception of Caddy, beautiful and tragic both, as a child and as woman. Still, in somewhat fragmentary fashion, we can see Caddy in various family situations, we can sense how much she means to Benjy, we can associate her, through Benjy, with images of brightness, comfort, and loss. In the second section Caddy is more clearly visible, and there are passages of remembered dialogue as revealing of Caddy’s character as of Quentin’s, but the world of Quentin’s section is so unstable, so hallucinatory, that the figure of Caddy, like so much else, is
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enveloped in uncertainty. In Jason’s section Caddy’s agony is evoked, but only briefly, while in the final section of the book she is no more than a memory. However, it was an essential element in Faulkner’s conception of the novel for Caddy never to be seen directly but only through the eyes of her three brothers, each with his own selfcentered demands to make upon her, each with his own limitations and obsessions. Throughout Benjy’s really chaotic reverie in Part One of ”The Sound and the Fury” Faulkner managed to present Benjy’s all–absorbing love for Caddy whose presence was Benjy’s joy; her absence was his grief; her possible return his hope. Caddy was the finely sensitive and mothering child who, motivated by her compassion for her younger brother, has given him a kind of motherly attention, previously denied to him because of his mother’s inadequacies. Tenderly, solicitously, Caddy has discovered ways of appealing to Benjy’s limited responses, to satisfy his instinctive and unreasoning hunger for orderliness, peacefulness, serenity. The fire, the redyellow cushion, the smooth satin slipper are only a few of the objects used by Caddy to provide him the values which are positive to him because they are somehow sustaining. Then Caddy has also taught Benjy the pleasure of multiplying these positive values through their reflections in the mirror. It might be said that Caddy herself has become for Benjy a kind of mirror of all his positive values, framed in love: her love for him and his love for her. Caddy is represented as having the greatest sensitivity to her brother’s power of serving as a kind of moral mirror, and her sensitivity is heightened by her unselfish love for him. This aspect of Benjy’s significance could be seen in four episodes which illuminate the progressive phases of Caddy’s growth. When she is old enough to be interested in adolescent courtship, she discovers that Benjy’s unreasoning reaction against the smell of perfume gives her a sense of guilt and prompts her to wash herself clean – a primitive ritual repeatedly correlated with Benjy’s potential for serving as moral agent and moral conscience in his family. Later, when Benjy escapes from the house one night, to find Caddy and Charlie kissing in the swing on the lawn, Caddy leaves Charlie, in order to quiet Benjy, but also because Benjy has again evoked a sense of guilt in her. ”We ran out into the moonlight, toward the kitchen... Caddy and I ran. We ran
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up the kitchen steps, onto the porch, and Caddy knelt down in the dark and held me. I could hear her and feel her chest. ”I wont.” She said, ”I wont anymore, ever, Benjy. Benjy.” Then, she was crying, and I cried, and we held each other. ”Hush”. She said. ”Hush. I wont anymore.” So, I hushed and Caddy took the kitchen soap and washed her mouth at the sink, hard. Caddy smelled like trees”. The third time when Benjy is represented as a moral mirror occurs as Caddy returns home immediately after her first complete sexual experience. In that scene, two implicit analogues which complemented each other were correlated: first, the analogue of Benjy as a moral mirror; secondly, the analogue between simple physical vision and conscious moral vision, suggested by the persistent recurrence of the word ”eyes”, ”looking”, ”seeing”, as Benjy again evokes in Caddy a deeper sense of guilt. ”Caddy came to the door and stood there, Looking at Father and Mother. Her eyes flew at me, and away. I began to cry. I went loud and I got up. Caddy came in and stood with her back to the wall, looking at me. I went toward her,
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crying, and she shrank against the wall and I saw her eyes and I cried louder and pulled at her dress. She put her hands out but I pulled at her dress. her eyes ran...” Each of these three closely related episodes is associated in Benjy’s recollection with his ultimate reaction, at the time of Caddy’s fake wedding, where the sense of guilt was ironically washed away with champagne until the celebration was terminated by Benjy’s unreasoning and bellowing protest. This fourth episode represents the end of the period in Benjy’s life when Caddy had been able to help him by bringing a relative order out of his relatively chaotic experience, and the end of the period when Benjy had served as a moral mirror for Caddy. She goes away after the fake wedding ceremony, leaving a double image of herself as reflected in the consciousness of her family. The initial image of Caddy has been the one that reflected repeatedly in the consciousness of Benjy; the sensitive and mothering Caddy whose love for Benjy evoked his love for her and gave meaning to his love. That image remains. Caddy’s departure from the Compson place in 1912 is sensed as lack, an absence, which is compensated for by the sound of ”caddy” on the neighboring golf course and by the presence of Miss Quentin, who becomes like her mother, in many respects, in Benjy’s mind. However, the second image of Caddy is the one, soon reflected, in the consciousness of Mrs. Compson, Quentin and Jason: the image of a member of the family whose fall from innocence is said to have brought a peculiar disgrace on the entire family; a disgrace considered equal to, or even greater than that of Ben’s idiocy. Caddy’s older brother Quentin, instead of seeing her as a human being, makes her an abstract symbol for the moral chaos around and within himself. Whereas Benjy reacts in pain to Caddy’s misadventures, Quentin takes refuge in moral fantasies. He wants to change or in some way exorcise the memories that torment him. In early childhood Caddy is little more than a symbol for innocence and natural affection. She develops her sense of guilt under the impact of her brother’s puritanism. The extent of Quentin’s responsibility is established by three related scenes, all involving water imagery. The first scene takes place by the small creek in the Compson pasture and is reported by Benjy. Caddy is playing with the other children in the
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creek, and having got her dress wet, decides to take it off to dry. Although Quentin is only a child, he makes a moral objection. When Caddy pays no attention to him, he splashes water on her. This scene is paralleled by a later one, described by Quentin, in which the youth tries to make his schoolgirl sister ashamed of her flirtation with boys. He taunts her: ”What did you let him for kiss kiss”. Caddy replies, ”I didn’t let him I made him”. Quentin slaps her and rubs her head in the grass to which Caddy retorts: ”I didn’t kiss a dirty girl like Natalie anyway”. The monologue narration, representing Quentin’s memory, then shifts to a scene in which Quentin and Natalie, a neighbour girl, are ”dancing sitting down” in the barn when Caddy appears accusingly in the door. Refusing to accept the fact of his sister’s growth into sexuality, Quentin tries to make her see the world through his puritan eyes. When Caddy answers, ”I don’t give a damn what you were doing”, he splashes her with the mud in which he has rolled. ”You don’t you don’t I’ll make you I’ll make you give a damn. She hit my hands away I smeared mud on her with the other hand I couldn’t feel the wet smacking of her hand I wiped mud from my legs smeared it on her wet hard turning body hearing her fingers going into my face I couldn’t feel it even when the rain began to taste sweet on my lips”. A third water scene takes place on the day of Caddy’s seduction, when Quentin finds her lying in the creek. His anger is directed not at her loss of virginity but at her failure to recognize her action as sinful: ”Caddy you hate him don’t you don’t you”. When the girl refuses to speak the words of hatred, Quentin holds a knife at her throat. This gesture, like the attempted seduction which follows, is more an expression of Quentin’s despair than a genuine effort to escape it. Caddy becomes a helpless victim both of her capacity for love and of her brother’s efforts to pervert that love into abstract morality. Her promiscuity reflects the selfhatred which Quentin has helped to force upon her. ”There was something terrible in me”, she tells Quentin, ”sometimes at night I could see it grinning at me I could see it through them grinning at me through their faces it’s gone now and I’m sick”. Although a natural expression of love has become a poison to Caddy, she drinks it to excess and after her summer vacation becomes pregnant – feeling ”dead” inside. Her hasty marriage is foredoomed to failure, and, as her mother phrases it, she quickly turns into a ”fallen woman”. То Quentin the idea of sexual union means death, and is associated with water and shadow imagery. After following Caddy to her meeting with Ames, he watches ”her shadow high against
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his shadow one shadow”. Later on Quentin refers to ”shadows of things like dead things in stagnant water”. Such imagery expresses the boy’s sick Puritanism and indicates the strength of his corrupting influence upon Caddy. She finally admits to her brother: ”I died last year I told you I had but I didn’t know then what I meant… but now I know I’m dead I tell you”. This explains the phrase by which Quentin refers to Caddy’s promiscuous summer vacation: ”found not death at the salt licks”. The implication is that Caddy died morally at the Indiana resort town, French Lick, she should have died a physical death, as well. The phrase ”death at the salt licks” also suggests the bones of dead animals associated with salt licks, perhaps implying that Caddy’s animal sexuality deserved a similar end. Although Quentin is largely responsible for Caddy’s disgrace, he finds its reality intolerable. His concern for family and personal honor compels him, since the pat cannot be recalled, either to change his memory or to destroy himself. At first he tries to alter the nature of Caddy’s dishonor by sheer force of will. This is why Quentin tries to convince his father that he and Caddy have committed incest. But Mr. Compson ridicules Quentin’s obsession with Caddy’s lost honor, arguing that virginity is a male concept. ”Women are never virgins. Purity is a negative state and therefore contrary to nature. It’s nature is hurting you not Caddy”. Yet Mr. Compson is no less upset than Quentin over his daughter’s promiscuity: at the time of her disastrous summer he begins to drink himself to death. Mr. Compson employs cynicism and irony in order to escape what his puritan mind, like Quentin’s cannot tolerate. Quentin plays big brother to the little Italian girl the way he previously played big brother to Caddy. The Italian girl evokes fragments and memories concerning earlier and related episodes involving Quentin and Caddy. Caddy’s love for her younger brother Benjy and for her older brother Quentin was soiled, stained and perverted by Quentin’s selflove until Caddy, trying to keep up with her brother, got into trouble. To a large degree, Quentin is represented as having been personally responsible for the change which occurred in the character of Caddy. Yet, even as Quentin rejects as ridiculous the charge of the Italian brother, ”You steela my sister”, so he also rejects and ignores even the suggestions made by his own conscious or subconscious mind that he was, indeed, in some way responsible for what happened to Caddy. So, by suicide, Quentin seeks to overcome the shadow of temporal fatality falling upon his family and himself.
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The third set of images of Caddy is provided by Jason’s reflecting angle of vision. Even as Caddy’s brother Quentin has somehow been at least partially responsible for the moral degeneration of Caddy, so Jason is represented as being at least partially responsible for the moral degeneration of Caddy’s daughter. Jason hates both Caddy and her daughter Miss Quentin. For him: ”Once a bitch always a bitch,…”. The fate of Quentin’s younger brother Jason, like that of his brothers, is linked to Caddy’s downfall. Jason is outraged by her actions, but the reason for his hatred is the perverse conviction that her behavior has cost him the banking job promised by Herbert Head, Caddy’s fiancé and later husband. This sense of injury is Jason’s justification for stealing the money which Caddy sends to Jefferson for the support, board and room of her illegitimate daughter, named Quentin. So, his method of exploiting Caddy was to accept and cash her checks in his mother’s name. Mrs. Compson mistakenly thought that the checks she was burning represent Caddy’s tainted income, and that money regularly paid into her account comes from Jason’s salary. Caddy appears only once in this last section of the novel but her role in Jason’s conflict with Miss Quentin is clearly presented in the background. Jason is always mean and sometimes even cruel to his niece Quentin who following her mother’s footsteps becomes promiscuous just like her mother Caddy. He even convinces himself that he is the loyal guardian of his niece. Seeing her playing truant from school with a boyfriend from the circus, he gives reckless chase: ”Me, without any hat, in the middle of the afternoon, having to chase up and down back alleys because of my mother’s good name. Like I say you cant do anything with a woman like that, if she’s got it in her. It it’s in her blood, you cant do anything with her. The only thing you can do is to get rid of her, let her go on and live with
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her own sort”. The relation between Jason and his niece recalls the more veiled one between the boy Quentin and Caddy. Even as Jason robs the young girl of her rightful money, he badgers and bullies her, driving her finally to desperate rebellion. She robs Jason of his precious and ill gotten savings and runs off with the carnival man. Whereas the corrupting influence of the older Quentin over Caddy is subtle and is veneered with professions of love, that of Jason over his niece is brutal and open. The girl’s reaction, in turn, is neither complex nor restrained. ”I don’t care,” she tells him. ”I’m bad and I’m going to hell, and I don’t care. I’d rather be in hell than anywhere where you are”. Again, she tells Jason: ”Whatever I do, it’s your fault… If I’m bad it’s because I had to be. You made me. I wish I was dead. I wish we were all dead”. However, in the end, Jason falls victim to a kind of ”legal illegal” irony, for in stealing his money Miss Quentin revenges him. However, she is not only getting her own back but also acting in the manner and spirit of Jason himself. So smart a man, as the Negro Job has said, can be outsmarted only by himself. Having cut off humanity, he is eventually defeated by it in the person of the ”man with the red tie” (who is never otherwise specified) who runs off with Miss Quentin. Even to the end, however, Jason thinks of nothing but the ”business deal” that has been revoked: ”…Of his niece he did not think at all, nor the arbitrary valuation of the money. Neither of them had had entity or individuality for him for ten years; together they merely symbolized the job in the bank of which he had been deprived before he ever got it”.
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As the book stands, however, Caddy emerges somewhat incomplete from the first two sections, and in the last two the attention shifts from her to her daughter, Quentin. A different limitation in the viewpoints of Benjy, Quentin, and Jason makes unavoidable the shadowiness and imprecision, of Caddy’s presentation: because the mind of each is so closed upon its own obsessions that it is scarcely true to speak of their interior monologues as throwing light upon Caddy from a variety of angles; it is rather as though a series of photographs in differing focus were superimposed one upon the other, blurring all the clarity of outline or detail. The novel revolves upon Caddy, but Caddy herself escapes satisfactory definition, and her daughter’s tragedy, simply because it is more directly presented, and in some ways more moving. In Jason’s section Caddy’s agony is most movingly evoked, but only briefly so, she has been mentioned as being seen with some general in a car in some foreign country, while in the final section of the book she is no more than a memory. Bibliography: 1. Bleikasten, Andre (1976). The Most Splendid Failure: Faulkner’s The Sound and The . Indiana University Press, Bloomington. Fury 2. Bloom, Harold, (ed.). Modern Critical Interpretations: William Faulkner’s The Sound and The Fury . Chelsea House, New York. 3. Cowan, Michael H., (ed.) (1968). Twentieth Century Interpretations of The Sound and The Fury . Englewood Cliffs, PrenticeHall, New Jersey. 4. Fargnoli, Nicholas A., and Michael Golay (2002). William Faulkner A to Z . Checkmark, New York. 5. Gwin, Minrose C. (1994). Hearing Caddy’s Voice. The Sound and the Fury . Second edition. A Norton Critical Edition. W. W. Norton and Company, New York: 405–12. 6. Hoffman, J. Frederick (1961). William Faulkner . University of California, Riverside, Twayne Publishers, Inc.: New York.
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7. Irwin, John T. (1996). Doubling and Incest/Repetition and Revenge: A Speculative Reading of Faulkner. Expanded edition. Johns Hopkins University Press, Baltimore. 8. Kinney, Arthur F. (1982). Critical Essays on William Faulkner: The Compson Family. G. K. Hall, Boston. 9. Miner, L. Ward (1952). The World of William Faulkner . Duke University Press, Grove Press, Inc. 64 University Place, New York 3, N.Y. 10. Minter, David (1979). “Faulkner, Childhood, and the Making of The Sound and the Fury.” American Literature 5 1 : 376 –9 3 . 11. O’Connor Van William (1959). William Faulkner . University of Minnesota pamphlets on American writers, Jones Press, Inc., Minneapolis. 12. Polk, Noel (ed.) (1993). The American Novel: New Essays on The Sound and The Fury . Cambridge University Press, Cambridge. 13. Swiggart, Peter (1962). The Art of Faulkner Novels . University of Texas Press, Austin. 14. Warren Penn Robert (ed.) (1966). Faulkner – A Collection of Critical Essays . Prentice–Hall, Inc., Englewood Cliffs, New Jersey. 15. Weinstein, Philip (ed.) (1982). William Faulkner’s The Sound and The Fury: A Critical Casebook . Garland, New York.
***** Tatjana Gojković lives in Novi Sad and has more than 20 years of teaching experience in various contexts and has worked as a translator since 1st September, 2000. Her responsibilities as a Director of Studies in ”L.L.A.” Center, www.lla.edu.rs include both teaching and translating. Apart from advising colleagues upon formation and delivery of ESP, general & business classes, structuring private school classes and curriculum she also gives lectures to kids and adults general, business & ESP, attends teacher development sessions which she considers necessary if one wants to be able to keep abreast of trends and changes in EL teaching process. So far she has translated a large number of brochures, catalogs, expert texts in many
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fields, such as history, economy, law and medicine, numerous highly specialized texts and those dealing with business correspondence among companies. From 2003 to 2010, she translated a great number of Scientific Abstracts and Summaries for the University professional Journal ”Research Works” No. 15 ─ 21 from Serbian into English language at the Department of History, Faculty of Philosophy, Novi Sad, as well as the ones for the professional Journal of the Museum of Novi Sad. In her opinion learning is a lifelong process and it is a teacher’s duty to improve his/her own learning outcomes and approaches in this constantly changing and more and more webbased learning environment. She holds a BA in English Language and Literature and a MSc in Medieval History.
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CREATIVITY IN THE ENGLISH LANGUAGE CLASSROOM: A BOOK REVIEW Olivera Ilić, Primary School ‘Sveti Sava’, Požarevac, Serbia Key words: creativity, English language teaching, drama, storytelling, activities
Creativity in the English language classroom is an ebook published by British Council and edited by Alan Maley and Nik Peachey. The book comprises of eighteen chapters which deal with various aspects of creativity in language learning and teaching. Each chapter is written by a different author from wellknown authors such as Andrew Wright and Carol Read, to university professors and practicing teachers from around the world. Activities in the book are suitable for teaching different age groups and levels, and can be used alongside with the existing syllabus and course materials. Here are the short summaries of chapters: Overview : Creativity – the what, the why and the how by Alan Maley In the introductory chapter, Maley tries to clarify what ‘creativity’ is, to explain why it is important in language teaching, and offers ideas for implementing creative activities within teaching practice. He also gives a list of useful resource materials which foster creativity. Chapter 1 : Medium: companion or slave? by Andrew Wright In this chapter, Wright describes and discusses various examples of creative use of media and materials available to teachers, in order to make the teaching fresh, relevant and efficient. Some of the ways of creating engaging events in the classroom he suggests are drama, stories,
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music, chants, poetry, dance, mime, stories, proverbs, personal and family anecdotes, shadow theatre, pair and group work. Chapter 2 : Challenging teachers to use their coursebook creatively by Brian Tomlinson In order to foster students’ creativity, Tomlinson suggests adapting coursebook material. He demonstrates how the use of coursebooks can become more creative by replacing or modifying closed activities with open activities which encourage personal response, authentic communication, and language discovery. Some of the activities he suggests are storytelling dramatization (acting out a text from a coursebook), and peer activities (students develop activities themselves for their peers). Chapter 3 : Seven pillars of creativity in primary ELT by Carol Read The focus of Carol Read’s chapter is the development of critical thinking with young learners. The author introduces seven pillars of creativity, which enable teachers to develop creativity in their classrooms: (1) build up children’s positive selfesteem, (2) model creativity yourself, (3) offer children choice – in order to help children develop autonomy and have control of their of their learning, (4) use questions frequently, (5) make connections encourage children to make connections and see relationships between different areas of their lives, general ideas and creative thinking, present and previous learning, etc. (6) explore ideas – encourage learners to experiment and play with ideas, (7) encourage critical reflection enable children to evaluate and reflect critically on their own ideas, performance, and outcomes. In this chapter you can also find numerous useful activities and tips for working with young learners. Chapter 4 : Making thinking visible in the English classroom: nurturing a creative mindset by Chrysa Papalazarou We can encourage creative thinking in the English classroom by using artful visual stimuli and the Visible Thinking approach. Visible Thinking is a researchbased approach that looks into how we can encourage learners’ engagement, independence and understanding. It nurtures students’ thinking by ‘externalising’ it when they engage with content, by making it visible (you can find more on Visible Thinking on the website: www.visiblethinkingpz.org ). The author also provides examples of using Visible Thinking approach in the classroom. Chapter 5: P ersonal and creative storytelling: telling our stories by David Heathfield
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David Heathfield’s chapter deals with storytelling and the importance of students’ development as personal storytellers and storylisteners in English. Personal storytelling activities in class develop students’ confidence, fluency, memory, pronunciation, use of vocabulary and their ability to communicate creatively. The author also presents nine storytelling ideas for different age groups and language levels. Chapter 6: T eaching grammar creatively by Jill and Charlie Hadfield Jill and Charlie Hadfield demonstrate a number of techniques for generating creativity in order to practise grammatical patterns and the application of rules. They believe such activities are more motivating to learners because they engage with the language more personally than in traditional grammar activities. In the activity called ’Overheard in a Café’, for example, students look at the pictures of people in the café, and then write an ‘overheard’ conversation between the characters. Language that they are practicing is reported speech. Chapter 7 : From everyday activities to creative tasks by Judit Fehér Fehér provides tips to teachers on how to integrate creativity into their everyday classroom practice and typical languagelearning activities and exercises. She presents various language learning approaches such as learnercentredness, holistic learning, multiple intelligences, neurolinguistic programming, humanistic teaching and taskbased learning. In the activities, students need to draw upon own experience and imagination, reflect on their own life, act in roles, animate objects or use their artistic, dramatic and musical skills. Chapter 8 : Fostering and building upon oral creativity in the EFL classroom b y Jürgen Kurtz Kurtz emphasizes the importance of improvised speaking and spontaneous communication. In order to enhance target language communication, foreign language teachers need to create inspiring environments for more adventurous, partly selfregulated classroom interaction. In this chapter Kurtz looks at typical patterns of interaction in EFL classrooms worldwide and presents good uses of improvisation. Chapter 9 : Old wine in new bottles: solving language teaching problems creatively by Kathleen M Bailey and Anita Krishnan This chapter explores how existing or inexpensive material can be used in a new way, and presents a number of activities which make students more creative as learners and users of
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English. The authors also present Gardner’s theory of multiple intelligences, which, they believe, can help teachers identify students’ strengths in learning. Chapter 10 : A creative approach to language teaching: a way to recognise, encourage and appreciate students’ contributions to language classes by Libor Stepanek Creative approach to language teaching is based on the idea that any student can be creative when they are engaged in creative situations. Therefore, it is teacher’s task to stimulate the creative potential in students, which can be achieved by exposing students to closetoreallife situations in a safe, flexible and dynamic environment. This approach was developed, tested and successfully implemented at Masaryk University Language Centre, Czech Republic. Chapter 11 : Teaching children with mascotinspired projects by Malu Sciamarelli At the beginning of the chapter, Sciamarelli outlines some basic features of projectbased learning, and then explores how toys and puppets can be used in projects with young learners. She presents five examples of mascotinspired projects with the fluffy toy Brownie the Bear and its friends. In Model Building activity, for example, students are divided into groups, and each group has to create a part of the imaginary city for the class mascot. Based on these projects, teachers will be able to create and elaborate their own original and creative projects with a mascot of their choice. Chapter 12 : Creating creative teachers by Marisa Constantinides Constantinides points out that it is important to help teachers develop their creative thinking skills and emphasizes the role of teacher training courses in supporting the development of teacher creativity. The author also provides teachertraining ideas for fostering creativity. Chapter 13 : The learner as a creativity resource by Marjorie Rosenberg Rosenberg looks at how we can exploit our students’ experiences and use them as the basis for creative language tasks. Incorporating drama, songs, music, artwork, etc. in language teaching can serve as a springboard to creativity. The ideas and activities suggested in this chapter are taken from current methodologies and approaches such as Suggestopedia, communicative language teaching and cooperative learning. Chapter 14 : Practising creative writing in high school foreign language classes by Peter Lutzker
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In this chapter, Peter Lutzker describes how he used a creative writing process in order to teach English language to a class consisting of 17yearold German students. He explains in detail the writing techniques and activities he used in a threeweek preparatory unit consisting of ten 45 minute lessons, which were designed to prepare pupils to write their own short stories. After this introductory unit, the students were given six more weeks to work on their stories as a longterm homework assignment. The end result were original and imaginative stories the pupils wrote themselves. Chapter 15 : Fostering learners’ voices in literature classes in an Asian context by Phuong thi Anh Le The author of this chapter shares her personal experience in teaching American literature course for Vietnamese college students majoring in English. She points that it is essential for teachers to create a motivational learning atmosphere where students can play an active and meaningful role in learning literature. The method of teaching that was used was based on a readerresponse approach which focuses on students’ exploration and response to the texts. Students were not expected to spend time figuring out exactly what was meant by the authors by their works. Rather, they were encouraged to think about what they read and how it was relevant to their own life and experience. The teacher used pictures and guided questions to help the students explore the texts, to set them thinking about what they read and to arouse their emotions. Teaching literature in this way not only more enjoyable to the students but also beneficial in enhancing their literary appreciation and developing their creativity and language skills. : A framework for learning creativity by Tessa Woodward Chapter 16 Woodward discusses different ways of how we and our students can become more creative. She tries to redefine creativity as an everyday doing, making, adapting and creating and all the other activities that are part of our lives. She also points the importance of collective creativity and encouraging students to collaborate with each other. Chapter 17 : Drama and creative writing: a blended tool by Victoria HlenschiStroie In this chapter, HlenschiStroie discusses benefits of using educational drama and creative writing in ELT classroom, and presents a number of useful activities, tips and resources. The author also gives a brief background of the development of educational drama and creative
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writing in Romania, and introduces EDAR (Educational Drama Association in Romania) a nongovernmental organisation officially recognised by the Ministry of Education which represents a network of teachers interested in using drama and creative writing in schools. Chapter 18 : A journey towards creativity: a case study of three primary classes in a Bulgarian state school by Zarina Markova In this chapter Markova shares with us various ELT techniques which can be used with young learners in order to foster their creative thinking and expression . What’s in a picture? is a brainstorming activity where students have to describe an image (modern art painting for example) which is shown in such a way that the visible part is both small enough to prevent guessing and big enough to present an idea and stimulate imagination. Creativity in the English language classroom is an inspiring and educational publication, full of practical ideas and useful tips. It encourages us, as the teachers, to integrate creative activities more in everyday English language teaching and make the language learning more enjoyable and fun. Creativity in the English language classroom is free and it can be downloaded from this link . *** Olivera Ilić is an English teacher working at Primary School ‘Sveti Sava’ in Požarevac. She has received BA and MA degree at the Faculty of Philology at the University of Belgrade. She has also completed CELTA training in UK, and ELT professional development courses in Spain, USA, Moscow and Serbia.
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ELTA Newsletter November December 2015
UPCOMING EVENTS ● ● ● ●
Conferences Seminars / Trainings Competitions Webinars
CONFERENCES * Call for papers still open for some of the conferences, check it out
✓ TESOL France 34th Annual Colloquium Date: November 2022, 2015 Place: Paris, France TESOL France 34th Annual Colloquium For more, follow the link:
✓ “Making Teaching Count!” Date: November 2324, 2015 Place: Vlora, Albania For more, follow the link : Making Teaching Count!
rd ✓ 23 IATEFL Slovenia Conference
Date: 36 march 2016 Place: Terme Topolšica For more, follow the link : IATEFL Slovenia
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ELTA Newsletter November December 2015 th ✓ 24 Annual HUPE Conference
Date: 810 April 2016 Place: Hotel Ivan Solaris Beach Resort Šibenik, Croatia For more, follow the link : HUPE Confrerence 2016.
✓ IATEFL Birmingham 2016 Date: 13th16th April 2016 Place: I CC , Broad Street, Birmingham, B1 2EA For more, follow the link : IATEFL Annualconference Birmingham2016
✓ TESOL 2016 – International Convention & English Language Expo – Reflecting Forward Date: 58 April, 2016 Place: Baltimore, Maryland, USA For more, follow the link : TESOL 2016
ONE DAY CONFERENCES ✓ The English Book day 2015. Date: 14 November, 2015.
Place: Sava Centar, Beograd For more, follow the link : The English Book Day
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ELTA Newsletter November December 2015
✓ Creativity Inspires Both Teachers and Learners Date: 21 November 2015 Place: Sava Centar, Beograd For more, follow the link : Seminar Creativity
SEMINARS / TRAININGS ✓ Creativity in the English Language Classroom (1 day seminars in 15 towns in Serbia) Date: November 2015 – February 2016 Place: Velika Plana, Beograd, Sremska Mitorvica, , Kruševac , Užice, Valjevo, Pirot, Kragujevac, Kikinda, Šabac,, Leskovac, Novi Sad, Sombor,Vranje : Creativity For more, follow the link
✓ Towards Better Understanding 8 Date: autumn 2015 spring 2016 Place: 16 towns in Serbia For more, follow the link: TBU
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ELTA Newsletter November December 2015
COMPETITIONS For teachers ✓ Win a Headway Scholarship and Develop Your Teaching Skills at Oxford University Closing date: January 11, 2016 For more, follow the link : Celebrating 30 years of Headway!
WEBINARS ✓ Macmillan webinars Macmillan webinars
✓ OUP webinars OUP webinars
✓ SEETA Webinars SEETA Webinars
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