There is (no) need for that!

A break from the norm today....

For those of you in the know, last year I gave a workshop at IATEFL Brighton entitled

The appropriacy and need of the explicit teaching of impoliteness in the second-language classroom in a UK setting.

This was really good. I enjoyed talking to other teachers and hearing their views on this quite emotive topic. I was contacted by one of the attendees to respond to a discussion that is taking place on his blog

Hi Martin, was at your great session. I'd like to interview you about your ideas on politeness for a blog debate going on at the moment. His name is Ed and you can find his blog here:

http://talkingbusinessinternationally.wordpress.com/

He asked me to add to the discussion by responding to these questions- I hope it adds value in some way:)

All comments greatly received on this

1. There’s currently a discussion about what forms of politeness English learners need to know and whether people can really absorb the politeness conventions of a new language. What’s your view?

I think you can but you need authentic contact within the culture. Whether or not that can be truly achieved in a traditional classroom setting, well I am unsure. Speaking as a language learner, I learned more about the culture the illocutionary force of the language by actually immersing myself in situations.

2. In your IATEFL talk last year, you described how learners living in the UK have a real need to at least be aware of ‘impolite’ forms of English, how did you come to this conclusion?

Something happened to me that had a profound effect on my teaching, and also my way of thinking. I would even go so far as to say that it led on to me questioning my own principles and approaches of teaching English.

I taught in a private language school here in Brighton, where the majority of students are young graduates. Predominantly these students are focused on obtaining the Cambridge FCE to improve their employment opportunities when they return home, but it is also clear from needs analysis that there is a need for ESOL tuition, and many of our students have spent at least one semester following programmes for the Cambridge ESOL skills for life examinations. The average period of stay is about one year and during their stay a secondary aim for many of these students is to obtain a greater understanding and experience of the UK through full integration in the target language and culture of the UK, and like many young adults, this includes taking advantage of Brighton’s established and eclectic social life.

One day, a student brought up a topic that would introduce this idea of teaching impoliteness…. Increasingly, the functional-notional aspect of the consolidation sessions had moved away from survival English, e.g., completing job application forms, setting up direct debits, to what to say in response to impoliteness being directed towards students.

After an impromptu class discussion where I invited students to share their experiences of impolite behaviour, it soon became apparent that the majority of students had unfortunately experienced a situation where they felt verbally threatened or uncomfortable during their time in Brighton. This primarily was taking place in social situations, but also somewhat worryingly in work settings as well: both by co-workers, supervisors and customers

At the time I didn’t know what to do! Only yesterday we were having a lovely lesson on the merits of different cafes in Brighton, and now the student body was asking for a lesson on how to respond to discourse that was perceived as impolite.

There is an awful lot to unpack from this situation, and I think it is worth noting here the key word RESPONDING. I had never heard of students requesting the language to instigate rude or impolite discourse exchanges…. That would be another postJ

This impolite discourse does happen on a daily basis unfortunately. The world that is reflected in coursebooks rarely exists outside of their pages. This is not an attack on publishers; it would take a brave publisher to reflect real life needs of impolite discourse. Reviewing materials that were at hand in the staffroom, professionally it seems that systematically we teach the importance of how to be polite extensively and in great detail. But this merry old England doesn’t really exist anymore (if it ever did!!!)

I feel strongly that in this sense it is not actually behaviour changing. The way I would behave in English is the same that I would behave in a second language. If a student is comfortable to do sth in their L1, then they should have the opportunity to do this in English.

I decided that there was a real need to empower students to have the ability and opportunity to respond impolitely, if they so wish, with full knowledge of the implications that such responses would have.

Almost by chance, as part of my MA, I came across an article by Gerry Mugford (2008) and this dilemma of appropriacy is something that he investigates, concluding

‘that teachers need to take the lead by preparing learners to communicate in pleasant, not so pleasant, and even abusive interactional and transactional situations’ (375).

3. How do you knowledge of impoliteness adds value to learners’ ability to operate in an English speaking environment?

There is clearly a need for teachers to provide the language for students to operate in any given situation they may find themselves in, and this, for many students, could be the not so pleasant and abusive situations. Adding this to a student’s lexical resource hopefully gives the student more confidence in their day-to-day English exchanges.

4. How did you go about introducing the subject of ‘impoliteness’ in class and how did your learners react?

As mentioned above, it was brought to me! The sessions went well. I was nervous that a few students might react badly to the lesson and not feel comfortable in the session. I introduced the topic systematically, and I think it helped that all the students had had a bad experience that they could discuss.

Ultimately the main technique I used was Awareness Raising, and this was primarily done through a social comparison of behaviour and the students’ own reflections on how their own culture differs to what they have experienced in the UK. I did this as a class discussion, and it was fascinating to hear differences of opinion between nationalities about the UK and it opened up opportunities for exploration into the ESOL syllabus and generated some really useful language patterns.

I did this by using existing coursebook materials

A possible welcome by-product would hopefully be that students feel more confident outside of class, and this would have a positive effect on their motivation and progress in English inside the classroom.

Two things that I did came straight from coursebooks we were using, and this was the topic of Customer services.

At the time we had the Ash cloud from Iceland, and later on in the year we had the travel chaos at Gatwick, and Eurostar. So the images of happy airport and rail passengers that were typical in the EFL coursebooks we were using were not so apparent.

We discussed what could go wrong, how to react and if we would be impolite. There was a wealth of material on youtube and bbc news channel at the time on these stories, and this provided great input materials for analysis.

Customer services was an especially interesting area as some of our students had experience of working in receptions at some of the hotels here in Brighton. We found, unsurprisingly, that many times being impolite actually ensured that staff would be understandably unhelpful.

This activity also opened up the much needed analysis of what is impoliteness: one person’s remark could be construed as banter or as a deeply insulting remark, and from this there would also be a clear need to differentiate and grade potential responses highlighting the level of how impolite something is, and generally what is seen as an appropriate response on a discourse level. This then lead onto further work such as pronunciation- attitudinal tone, and the illocutionary impact of the language based on relationships between speakers.

Interestingly, after implementing the awareness-raising activities and class discussion, most students said that they would never dream of using the target structures in their setting. The feedback it seemed was that how to respond to impolite language was just another lexical set in the same way as making a complaint about food in a restaurant is. It was the empowerment of being able to be impolite that was desired rather than the actual need or desire to be impolite.

I don’t think it's about teaching foul language or how to swear like a native speaker, but rather raising awareness of situations where people are speaking impolitely and helping students to make informed decisions, with strategies and phrases: Knowing how to be impolite, and the potential consequences.

The students said this was useful to know, and as a teacher, I feel that that is reason enough to warrant this and further exploration.

5. Do you think impoliteness should be taught as a receptive skill alone or is there an argument for teaching the production of impolite language?

A given tenant of teaching is that we enable students to be adequately equipped with a lexical resource to operate in any given situation. How do you feel about this if the lexis is related to being impolite, disrespectful or rude? The second language classroom is usually the place for dealing with the more pleasant side of language and discourse whereas impoliteness is seldom a feature. I would say that having the knowledge of how to produce impolite language, and being aware of its potential consequences, is.... well, there is a strong argument to do this.

6. What would you advise trainers to focus on if they decide to address impoliteness in class?

It would be impossible for me to advise trainers individually: I can’t really offer up a definitive guide as all our contexts are unique and will be informed by the specifics of the ecology of our teaching environments, and also by your own pedagogical and social viewpoints. Also I am still working through my own interpretations and understanding of this theme!

This teaching of being impolite has a huge social and pedagogical stigma associated with it. Speaking to colleagues in the staff room highlighted comments and ideas that had a startling breadth of opinion on the topic, with most stating that they would never dream of teaching explicit impoliteness in class, yet would appreciate the illocutionary power that it wields if they were learning a foreign language.

Just before my presentation, I was contacted by an MA student at Liverpool’s John Moore’s University asking for my view on teaching impoliteness. Her name is Dawn Skeoch, and she shared her own research on the teaching of impoliteness as part of her dissertation work, and this quotation is a very nice summary that I ended up using in my presentation.

One interesting point that came indirectly out of my research was that teachers' and students' interpretation of the term impoliteness related to foul language or insulting language, not very many teachers thought about other branches of the term which is partly why they were against teaching the subject in class although interestingly they recognised the need for students to recognise that kind of language and situation. (Skeoch, 2011)

Dawn’s findings fit in with what I found:

It seems many teachers were experiencing this dissonance of approach-wouldn’t do it, but would want it as a student. This actually got us all talking and horror stories emerged of previous negative experiences in a second language setting.

Personally, I am quite confident that 9 times out of 10 I must say that I wouldn’t actually use impolite language in an L2 situation but being able to think of a response would give me some comfort and confidence. I think trainers need to be guided by their own local context and student body.

7. Do you think practical matters, such as dealing with impoliteness, should have more of a central place in language teaching?

I do. It is language that our students need and as a learner I would like to have access to this language. I don’t think it will ever be incorporated into a mainstream language course by a big publisher but on a local level it is something that we can help our students with.

An Epic Win

I came across this wonderful TED talk as part of my gamification research for the forthcoming dissertation. It is absolutely fascinating stuff. The case is made by the wonderfully articulate Jane McGonigal that the ills of the world can be resolved by computer games. World of Warcraft to be particular. By playing these types of immersive, games filled with co-operative problem solving tasks, we are learning how to be social and developing our analytical skills.

This is a rather simplistic rendering of her talk, but it is a really interesting vid and I do recommend it. It did get me thinking though. My two games of choice in a desert island kind of scenario would be The Resident Evil series and Championship manager… I play these a lot, perhaps too much to be honest… And I am wondering what I am learning from these games.

I know that the T-virus is pretty bad news and that Mixalis Pavlis has the potential to be the most feared striker in Europe (for an anti-football 4231 formation) but is there any more than this…

Resident Evil has a really strong narrative that has developed since 1996 and this survival horror has even survived some really bad film versions. Champ man is really popular 442 magazine has a regular feature on young players from around Europe that you highlight potential talent.

I feel quite bad when your assistant manager informs you that you have had to let a player go. I do end up worrying about them! How will they get on… they have been at the club since they were 15… what will they do… the power is overwhelming yet a burden. I don’t know how Fergie does it.

There are things to learn from a lot of games I don’t know it can change the world ( I might do after this dissertation) but for the moment I can see that I learn a lot about myself… which might not be a bad thing.

For parity here is the exceptional Stephen Colbert asking the questions a lot of people would want to ask the ace Jane. Enjoy:)

The Colbert Report	Mon - Thurs 11:30pm / 10:30c
Jane McGonigal
www.colbertnation.com
Colbert Report Full Episodes Political Humor & Satire Blog Video Archive

What we bring to the interview

One thing that has really interested me in the DRC process is how individual interviewers could potentially conduct the same interview with the same person and collect different data on different days by just deciding to follow one tangent rather than another or focusing on one aspect over another. The more I think about this the more it overwhelms me (butterfly effect, chaos theory etc...) The prep we do beforehand, the day we are having, what we have just learned / read can all influence our questions and elements of the interview. I am kind of sensing a catch 22 with this micro level preparation / conduction... What the interviewer brings to the interview is going to be an interesting area for me to focus on during the assignment.

The downward, outward and upward spiral

Two posts in a week -wow, I do have more time now! This is just a brief musing in relation to my Developing Researcher Competence. As we work through our Pilot Study we are required to make decisions about the actual design of the study - ultimately giving our opinions- why we did what we did, why we think what we think. Something hit me when I was thinking through this process.

For me, I can liken this design of a pilot study to a movable spiral. Continuously moving over the bigger picture of the design process and then moving the focus in or out, as the design question dictates. Two things came up that I need to reflect further on:

It is quite easy to be lost in the detail, but for a research project you may have to be...

One small decision can, and will change the whole scope of the final project

This links back to my ideas about making rash decisions and having to question everything - I believe that this is called researcher transparency and this is what we are looking at in the next step.

I quite like this movable spiral metaphor and I would be interested to see if anyone else had a metaphor for when they are conducting research.

Goodbyes and hellos

So. Last Friday was my final day at the Castle School of English, Brighton... I was at the school for 4 years, 3 of them as DoS. I learned a lot about myself and what I want from a profession, and also what is important to me. This, I am sure, will be invaluable in the future. The owner of the school asked me if I thought I had changed over the four years. I don't know if I have changed, but I have learned how I react to certain situations

It is starting to get real now- this moving lark. This morning I was watching UK border force on TV and just started panicking about being turned away at the airport. My naturally tendency to worry, again:)I will not really relax until I am on the other side of the barrier!

I spent the morning reading other people's accounts of the visa process and experience of Newark as a Port of Entry. Fascinatingly scary, but didn't read about anyone who got completely turned away, so that must be a good thing.

Was a wee bit sad to leave Castle, they are a great bunch of talented individuals, but this profession does seem to go hand in hand with quite a transient lifestyle. The fantastic upshot of this is that I now have a lot more time to spend on my new role and my final year at Manchester.

I am REALLY excited about my new position. Teaching in Second Life is just amazing, I love it! I can liken it to when I passed the CELTA and everything is new; it has certainly given me a new lease of life on the teaching front. My new employers seem an absolute dream bunch of people. Everything I want really - talented, dedicated, supportive. I am excited to see how this new position develops... one for future reflection I fancy.

Sacroiliac Joint

For those non-medical folk, here is a quick run down on the Sacroiliac Joint...and its accompanying pain.



The sacroiliac joint or SI joint is the joint in the bony pelvis between the sacrum and the ilium of the pelvis, which are joined together by strong ligaments. In humans, the sacrum supports the spine and is supported in turn by an ilium on each side. The joint is a strong, weight bearing synovial joint with irregular elevations and depressions that produce interlocking of the two bones. The human body has two sacroiliac joints, one on the left and one on the right, that often match each other but are highly variable from person to person.

Pain is thought to be caused by sacroiliitis, an inflammation of one of the sacroiliac joint(s), which is a common cause of unilateral low back pain. With sacroiliitis, the individual may experience pain in the low back, buttock or thigh, depending on the amount of inflammation. Common problems of the sacroiliac joint are often called sacroiliac joint dysfunction (also termed SI joint dysfunction; SIJD). The cause of sacroiliac joint dysfunction is likely a disruption of the correlative movements between the left and right sacroiliac joints (from either too much or too little movement creating an antagonistic position of the left and right innominate bones creating a pelvic obliquity, when they normally should appear symmetrical). Info from wikipedia



Quite a strange title and opening for a post in this blog, but all will become clear!
I will start with a quick catch up. I final got my visa for the USA after a few twists and turns. We have a put a deposit on a place to rent, I have a new job and am on final countdown until the move. I have two more weeks at work. I have also been diagnosed with SIJD, a common running injury; Yesterday was the first time I had ran for more than 5 weeks... More on that later.

All very exciting / traumatic and I think a legitimate reason for not having posted for a while. I must say though that this blog had often been on my mind.

Plus, and perhaps most importantly, Uni started again. This has been great!
It has been wonderful catching up with people after the really short summer, and seeing how all the hard work we have done over the last two years is culminating on our Developing Researcher Competence module. Manchester really has attracted a high level of candidates and it will be great to see what the future holds for everyone and where this course will take people.

This module relies heavily on an iterative process of self reflection and exploration of the process of researching an area.

Anyhoo, as part of this module, I have gone for the following area to explore.

I want to explore how teachers in Second Life use the environment. I had various ideas prior to this, a few false starts and a few revisions but I feel that this is the most suitable for me, right now and for my future. I don't want to get down that road right now, as I am still working through the process. So the point of this post (thank you if you are still here:)) Is that I realised that I am really rubbish at making big decisions! And there is a link here with my Sacroiliac Joint injury. During the process I had a tendency to choose the first option that seemed like a best fit, rather than thinking it through. It seemed as though I couldn't or didn't want to have a decision hanging over me. When I had my injury, and this was pre-diagnosis, I just decided that I would knock running on the head- I didn't want to have the idea of an injury hanging over me. I just wanted to remove myself from that arena! Not very rationale - especially for a 32 year old. This realization. that I can do such rash actions, is massive for me. Taking a step back before charging into something is reckless and something I need to work on. I don't know if running helped me with this realization, but it has made me think. I feel as though it was a watershed moment- hence this long, long post. So here is to my rather fine, but not too well, Sacroiliac joint. Long may you keep me grounded, in every sense of the word.

Transactional distance a changing perspective

a psychological and communication space to be crossed, a space of potential misunderstanding between the inputs of instructor and those of the learner (Moore, 1980)

In preparation for my imminent return to studies at Manchester, I have been re-reading some of the course materials. I love this time of year as it is a great opportunity to revisit ideas and comments made half a year ago and see how similar they are now. It is fascinating to see how ideas have been altered or strengthened based on the praxis of real world application. One such idea hit home with me last week and ties together a number of themes that are running through the DNA of this blog.

I was taking part in an SL session with colleagues from Europe (including UK ) and USA. As the session progressed I was aware more and more of a distance between the participants and myself. Nothing extraordinary there as this space is generally apparent in many online sessions, what I found interesting however, was the fact that my sense of transactional distance was shifting…

I had never felt this in a session before. Initially, the space between the UK participants was there but small. The distance between Brighton and Wyoming was noticeable and apparent to the extent you could almost touch it. Knowing the location and nationality of a person influenced me greatly and I am not sure why! This never happened with the online sessions organised with the University of Manchester.

There is a lot to unpack here and includes ideas about formal / informal learning; a walled garden of education; sense of self online… I am going to reflect on these issues further as the weeks progress and I am really interested to see how my move of
3899.7 miles (6275.9 Km / 3386.5 Nautical miles) will change how I interact with colleagues, friends, in the same arenas as now. Will there be a difference…. Probably…why…. I am not sure…yet:)

Moore, M. G. (1980). Independent study. In R. Boyd & J. Apps (Eds.), Redefining the Discipline of Adult Education. San Francisco: Jossey-Bass, pp. 16–31.