Category Archives: #AusELT Twitter chat

Not “just a bit of homework” – Engaging learners outside the classroom (#AusELT Twitter chat 4/11/18)

Our students have travelled a long way to find themselves in our language classrooms. Uncomfortable or alone, they sign up with a friend, or quickly identify and sit with a peer with the same culture and language background. They’re able to help each other navigate life and study and getting by in a strange land, and why not. This is a good thing.

However, our students have travelled a long way also because they need or want to make a life over here for a period of time. They want to feel like they can really get to know this place and make it their own, in some ways at least.

But the networks they establish at language institutions and in own-language communities often work against this goal. They provide solidarity and familiarity – but they don’t help make that leap to owning this new context and becoming participating members of the new language community that surrounds them.

For the last #AusELT Twitter chat of 2019 we’ll be swapping ideas on engaging learners outside the classroom, and hopefully going a step further than “just a bit of homework”.

Can you think of ways you have helped your learners engage with the wider local community?
What fears and obstacles might learners have around this, and how could we allay them?
What initiatives or activities have you found that genuinely spark learners’ passion for exploring the world through the medium of English?

Come and share your ideas on Sunday 4^th Nov at 8.30pm AEDT. Click here to see the time where you are.

As you’re still up, just a little bit of reading to whet your appetite:

Chappell, P., Benson, P. Yates, L. (2017). ELICOS students’ out-of-class learning experiences: An action research agenda. English Australia Journal 33(2), 43-48. Retrieved from: https://bit.ly/2RwtgO2

Wilson, S. (2018). The Rejection Project. An action research project encouraging student interaction outside the classroom. English Australia Journal 34(1), 22-40. Retrieved from eajournal.realviewdigital.com/?iid=161637#folio=28

UQ-ICTE Teachers, Ceara McManus and Henno Kotzé from #UQICTE shared their findings on connecting learners to the local campus community via https://t.co/DM2HHfDIka #EAConf18 pic.twitter.com/9FYnEkt2Je

— Institute of Continuing & TESOL Education (@ICTEUQ) September 21, 2018

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Keeping the momentum going AusELT Twitter Chat Sunday 7 Oct 2018 8.30pm AEDT

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This chat has now taken place. Please see the record of the chat, with additional links, here.

It’s often like a lot of pebbles dropped into the PD pond, where the ripples soon disappear.

You go to the conference / PD event / catch-up, and it’s a whirlwind of new ideas and re-found ones, of strategies to explore and links to follow up, of contacts made and connections strengthened. You come back exhausted and yes, you will make the time to reflect and to go back over notes and to sort the photos… after a little lie-down.

You catch a great webinar and for a change it’s a time for you to absorb rather than being the one feeding others, and the mobile is switched off for this lovely hour all to yourself. Then just as you leave at the end, there’s a knock at your door.

One way to keep up the momentum is to sit down with us for a Twitter chat. Come join us Sunday 7 Oct 2018 8.30pm-9.30pm. Bring your picnic hamper of ideas, strategies, links, readings, questions, and possibilities.

Please note daylight saving starts this weekend in Victoria, Tasmania, South Australia, the Northern Territory and New South Wales. Check times elsewhere in the world

Looking forward to talking with you, #AusELT

Image EAConf2018 clare.p.mcgrath@gmail.com

AI in the classroom – #AusELT ‘slowburn’ Twitter Chat – 9 September 2018

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Our #AusELT Twitter chat on Sunday September 9^th will be in the ‘slowburn’ format This means instead of the usual 1-hour format, we are spreading out over a whole 12 hours, starting at 10am Sydney time and ‘officially’ closing at 10pm. During that time, we will be posting discussion questions on the hour so feel free to come and join the discussion. If you are new to using Twitter or have a Twitter account but find regular chats a bit intimidating because of their pace, this is an ideal way to get involved without the usual time pressure.

For this chat, we will be heading into the area of educational futurism and looking at the notion of AI (artificial intelligence) in the classroom. We will springboard off the article that was posted in the Facebook group last week about AI replacing teachers (and that has been reposted below along with links to a couple of other recent articles on the topic). For years, people have been predicting a time when the presence of a human teacher will become unnecessary in our classrooms. In the chat we will look at the current developments in and use of AI in education and consider just how long it might be before our jobs are genuinely at risk.

For any help with Twitter, please visit the dedicated page on this blog.

https://thejournal.com/articles/2018/08/29/the-promise-of-ai-for-education.aspx

https://www.livemint.com/AI/lqVPJwrICdNQWQqXGXZpzJ/How-artificial-intelligence-is-making-the-education-system-m.html

This post by @Penultimate_K

Extensive Listening – AusELT Twitter chat, 1st July 2018

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This #AusELT Twitter chat was held on Sunday 1st July – read the transcript here .

Extensive Listening: auditory comprehensible input

for effective, and efficient, language acquisition

There seems to be a lot of discussion around about Extensive Reading, but not as much about Extensive Listening. The idea for this topic came from a recent podcast. Read on for more information, and links to some other background information on Extensive Listening that might be of interest and to get you thinking before the chat on Sunday.

In a recent episode of the We Teach Languages podcast, Beniko Mason talked about her Story Listening and Efficient Acquisition. ‘Efficiency’ is key for her, and her slogan is “Reduce suffering!”, meaning for the students, but when you learn more about the approach, you might agree it relates to teachers as well. Beniko Mason is trying to change that, and along with Stephen Krashen, has been conducting research and workshops on this approach to developing. Check out the podcast show notes to find links to her publications and current projects. A lot of the material there is focused on teaching young learners, but our discussion would be around how to use a similar approach, an Extensive Listening approach in our classrooms.

The Extensive Reading Central website has a section devoted to Extensive Listening, covering aspects such as:

What is Extensive Listening?
How to do Extensive Listening
Types of Extensive Listening materials
EL Resources, Links and Research

Rob Waring also has an Extensive Listening section on his website.

These two papers by Willy A Renandya might be of interest:

Materials and Methods for Extensive Listening (2012)
Extensive listening in the language classroom (2011)

This one is aimed at adult literacy teachers, but is a good addition to our discussion: Audiobooks for Adult Literacy? It’s Not a Myth!

This #AusELT Twitter chat was held on Sunday 1st July – read the transcript here .

[“Photo taken from http://flickr.com/eltpics by @sandymillin, used under a CC Attribution Non-Commercial license, http://creativecommons.org%5D

This post created by @cioccas

Teaching Speaking – AusELT Twitter chat, 3rd June 2018

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This was the topic for our Twitter chat on Sunday 3rd June. Read the transcript of the chat here.

As voted by our members, the topic for this chat was:

Teaching Speaking: speaking sub-skills, types of speaking, how to give effective feedback, meaningful communicative practice, beyond the classroom.

We’ve seen a few posts on ‘Speaking’ recently on the #AusELT Facebook group, plus it was the theme of recent Sydney MeetELT. so we thought it might be a popular topic to take to our Twitter chat. These are some of the topics we thought the chat could focus on:

What really are the sub-skills of speaking?
What types of speaking come up as necessary in our teaching contexts?
How can we give effective feedback on speaking, and how much? (check out Gabrielle Luoni’s presentation from the recent UECA PD Fest: Giving explicit feedback on speaking errors – the more, the better.
What makes meaningful communicative practice?
How can students develop speaking beyond the classroom?

This chat has already been held. Read the transcript of the chat here.

For those new to Twitter chats, these posts should get you started:

Need help with Twitter?
#AusELT 1-page guide to Twitter
So you have a Twitter account – now what? (from Cult of Pedagogy)
And for some reasons for teachers to be on Twitter at all, there’s this: Why teachers are turning to Twitter

If you are not sure about Twitter and need a hand to get started, do message Lesley on Facebook or Twitter (@cioccas) or by leaving a comment below.

July Twitter Chat:

Heads up for those who voted for the other topic, we’ll be discussing Extensive Listening: auditory comprehensible input for effective, and efficient, language acquisition as the topic for the next Twitter chat on Sunday 1st July.

This post created by @cioccas

#AusELT Twitter chat: What would you like to talk about on Sunday 3rd June 2018?

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We are approaching June which means we need to start planning for our next Twitter chat. That’ll be on Sunday 3rd June at 8:30pm AEST time.

We have a choice of two topics – see descriptions below, then VOTE!

Teaching Speaking: speaking sub-skills, types of speaking, how to give effective feedback, meaningful communicative practice, beyond the classroom.

We’ve seen a few posts on ‘Speaking’ recently on the #AusELT Facebook group, plus it was the theme of recent Sydney MeetELT. so thought it might be a popular topic to take to our Twitter chat. These are some of the topics we thought the chat could focus on:

What really are the sub-skills of speaking?
What types of speaking come up as necessary in our teaching contexts?
How can we give effective feedback on speaking, and how much? (check out Gabrielle Luoni’s presentation from the recent UECA PD Fest: Giving explicit feedback on speaking errors – the more, the better.
What makes meaningful communicative practice?
How can students develop speaking beyond the classroom?

Extensive Listening: auditory comprehensible input for effective, and efficient, language acquisition.

There seems to be a lot of discussion around about Extensive Reading, but not as much about Extensive Listening. In a recent episode of the We Teach Languages podcast, Beniko Mason talks about her Story Listening and Efficient Acquisition. ‘Efficiency’ is key for her, and her slogan is “Reduce suffering!”, meaning for the students, but when you learn more about the approach, you might agree it relates to teachers as well. Beniko Mason is trying to change that, and along with Stephen Krashen, has been conducting research and workshops on this approach to developing. Check out the podcast show notes to find links to her publications and current projects. A lot of the material there is focused on teaching young learners, but our discussion would be around how to use a similar approach, an Extensive Listening approach in our classrooms.

Please vote in the poll below and we’ll announce the winner on our Facebook page and on Twitter on Monday. The chat will take place on 3rd June at 8:30pm AEST time. (click here to see the time where you are).

Vote here:

What would you like to talk about on Sun 3 June 2018?

For those new to Twitter chats, these posts should get you started:

Need help with Twitter?
#AusELT 1-page guide to Twitter
So you have a Twitter account – now what? (from Cult of Pedagogy)
And for some reasons to be on Twitter, there’s this: Why teachers are turning to Twitter

If you are not sure about Twitter and need a hand to get started, do message Lesley on Facebook or Twitter (@cioccas) or by leaving a comment below.

Visual Literacy – #AusELT Twitter chat 6th May 2018

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image clare.p.mcgrath@gmail.com

This chat has now taken place. Click here to read the transcript

Infographic, kinetic typography, screenager, binge-watch, emoji, meme, vine, augmented reality…

John Hughes* lists these additions to our lexical repertoire to highlight the impact of visual communications on our lives and the renewed attention to the use of images in life (and work. Or work-life. Or life-work.) in the introduction to his article Visual Literacy in the English Language Classroom

What is it?

It seems no-one can agree on one definition. The International Visual Literacy Association has apparently spent the last 40+ years working on this, which seems bewildering until you remember the number of different disciplines and perspectives involved. They do quote Debes** as saying

“Visual Literacy refers to a group of vision-competencies a human being can develop by seeing and at the same time having and integrating other sensory experiences. The development of these competencies is fundamental to normal human learning. When developed, they enable a visually literate person to discriminate and interpret the visible actions, objects, symbols, natural or man-made, that he*** encounters in his environment. Through the creative use of these competencies, he is able to communicate with others. Through the appreciative use of these competencies, he is able to comprehend and enjoy the masterworks of visual communication.”

However, it seems everyone agrees that VL is fundamental to learning and living these days, whether understanding and evaluating increasingly multi-sensory / multi-modal experiences and messages, creating and communicating using these, or just plain enjoying them.

For the purposes of this Twitter chat, we’ll be focusing on from still images – photos, sketches, cartoons etc as well as emojis and memes – as well as graphs and charts, infographics and concept maps and graphic organisers, through to moving images from videos to GIFs, and if we can, VR and AR.

So please join in and share your experience, resources and questions. It’s a one-hour injection of ideas and inspiration.

Some of the questions we’ll be using to explore Visual Literacy (VL) are:

How do you define ‘visual literacy’ in ELT? What is a ‘visual text’?
Is VL reflected in your curriculum? How? / How could it be?
What kind of visual imagery do you and your students use / need to use, and why?
How do we / can we develop students’ VL skills? How can VL tasks be integrated with language development / practice and with other skills in ELT – analytical ~, critical thinking ~ – as well as with intercultural awareness and CLIL?
How does your own VL impact on your choices of and use of visual imagery for your own materials and presentations? What are some of the principles you apply when selecting / creating them?
What are your recommended sources for visual imagery? What are some of the tools and software you use to manipulate, create, or edit these? What about annotating, tagging, and other metadata skills?
What are your strategies to raise students’ and your colleagues’ awareness of provenance of visual sources, copyright IP and licensing (eg Creative Commons)?

* You may recognise the name John Hughes from the National Geographic Learning titles he’s authored. Here’s a link to an interview with him: Interview: John Hughes on Visual Literacy in the Language Classroom

** Debes, J.L. (1969). The loom of visual literacy. Audiovisual Instruction, 74(8), 25-27, quoted in http://ivla.org/new/what-is-visual-literacy-2/

*** !!!

This chat has now taken place. Click here to read the transcript.

Image clare.p.mcgrath@gmail.com

This post prepared by @Clare_M_ELT

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Extensive Listening: auditory comprehensible input

for effective, and efficient, language acquisition

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July Twitter Chat:

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image clare.p.mcgrath@gmail.com

Infographic, kinetic typography, screenager, binge-watch, emoji, meme, vine, augmented reality…

Image clare.p.mcgrath@gmail.com

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