TEFL Training Institute Podcast

Parents are one of the most important factors in determining how successful students are. In this episode, Jake Whiddon and I discuss how to involve parents in young learners’ learning. Why is it important to involve students' parents in language learning? How can we demonstrate learning to parents? What can teachers do to help parents understand language learning?

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Inside Online Language Teaching: Conversations About the Future That Became the Present

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We ask Mark Hancock (author of Pronunciation Games, English Pronunciation in Use and Pron Pack) what makes authentic English listening so difficult for students and what teachers can do to help learners understand connected speech

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Ross Thorburn: Hi, Mark. Thanks for joining us. To start off with, what is connected speech? What makes it difficult for students? Is there ever a time when we speak English where we're not using connected speech?

Mark Hancock: Well, if you imagine an old fashioned robot saying, "Salt and pepper, salt and pepper, I want the salt and pepper." That's English with no connected speech about it. Each word is separate, as if it were the dictionary version of the word.

Salt and pepper, actually used that as an example. Salt and pepper, we've got the t of salt appears to join the and, salt and pepper, t and pepper, t and pepper, salt and pepper. That's called linking. You've got the a of the and is reduced to a weak vowel. Salt and pepper. So that's called a weak form.

Then you've got the d of and disappears, that's called elision. Instead of ‘and’ you've got ‘n’. Then finally, the ‘n’ of and changes into something like a ‘m’. Because if the ‘p’ in pepper involves the lips being closed together. In preparation for that when the mouth is saying ‘n’, it tends to want to say ‘m’, so that it's ready for the pepper that comes later.

That's called assimilation. Those are all examples of connected speech. As you can probably tell that they are features for the benefit of the mouth, like the n changing to m is not so that I'm going to be more intelligible to you, so it's easier for me to say it. These features of connected speech are about streamlining the articulation.

Ross: Obviously, there's lots of things there that are really hard for students in terms of listening to connected speech. I think often when we do listening activities in class, the way we run them, maybe doesn't actually help students very much, right?

Mark Hancock: Yeah. It's interesting that in teaching listening, teachers often assume that the problem is going to be with difficult vocabulary or difficult grammar, and they pre‐teach the new vocabulary in the listening. Then they focus on listening comprehension questions.

If the students get them wrong, just play their audio again and say, "No, no, no, listen again. Do you hear it now?" If a student goes, "No, I don't hear it still." It's nothing to be done about it. What the teacher is missing here is that the problem wasn't with the long words.

The problem was with the short words or the common words that the student is not familiar with, in the connected speech form. For example, in connected speech, there are five words which may be reduced to homophones, like the word a, the. I can't say it right now, but there's a lot of different words end up sounding exactly the same.

If this student is expecting them to sound the way that they sound in the dictionary or said separately, then they're not going to be ready for that, what they're not ready for is the way that the words blend together.

What we can do I think is, devote some class time to focusing specifically on the way that words blend together in connected speech for the purpose of making the students better equipped as listeners.

Ross: As part of the problem there, Mark, that when we teach new words or phrases, we tend to drill them in a way that sounds a bit more like Robby the robot saying salt and pepper, rather than saying salt‐and pepper.

Mark Hancock: I think your student is probably going to store it in their memory in something like a dictionary citation form. You're saying that that might be a problem because when they hear it in the flow of speech, it might not have that form.

I think you could probably do it in two stages. In the first stage, they would learn it as a separate form in the case of a word like salt. Then in separate stage, learn how it sounds in a joined up way, think it might be a bit much to do it all at once. However, with other words, which are typically reduced, like, and.

I probably wouldn't teach the word and in a citation form because it's never cited on its own. It's always in the flow of speech. It depends on the word really. Another example for a longer word would be actually. Actually is rarely, if ever, pronounced t...

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Amol’s Ambedkar University Delhi webpage

Amol Padwad joins us to explain “decentering” in ELT. Amol tells us about the problem with language teaching having a “center” and how this can cause voices and ideas to be suppressed.

De centering in English Language Teaching (with Amol Padwad)

Ross Thorburn: Hi everyone, welcome back to TEFL Training Institute podcast. I'm Ross Thorburn and this week we're talking about decentering in English language teaching. My guest for this week's episode is Amol Padwad. Amol is director at the Center for English Language Education at Ambedkar University in Delhi.

In the episode, Amol tells us about first of all what decentering is, what counts as being the center of the language teaching world and what are some problems with that. We talk about some concepts and people that are unfairly on the peripheries of language teaching. Enjoy the episode.

Ross: Amol, thank you for joining us. To begin with, what is decentering? What does it mean and where does the concept come from?

Amol Padwad: Well, actually, the roots of this term may be traced back to post‐structuralism and even postmodernism.

In simple words, it means removing something from a central position but it's a very complex notion as you will easily agree. As I understand, it refers to countering any hegemony tendency which comes in form of dominance or influence of a center.

For the purpose of decentering, I would call a center to be any entity which claims to have exclusive ownership of roots or expertise or right solutions and then ends up dominating or suppressing alternative sources of expertise or knowledge or solutions.

For example, a particular entity is saying that, "I know everything." Or "We have the final best possible solutions for any problem and if you want, you must use them. Other solutions are not good." Then, I would call that centering tendency.

When I say this, I think I must also clarify that I am not suggesting a center as a problem per say. In fact, I believe that centers exist to offer some stability to any structure. The center is not a problem, centering is a problem. What is the difference?

Center is an entity, but if that center behaves in a particular way, a way that disregards or disrespects alternatives or the others, that tries to create domination hegemony, that tries to claim exclusive ownership of a particular truth or knowledge or something, then that is a centering tendency.

Any center harboring those tendencies will be a problem. Decentering is against the centering tendencies.

Ross: Great. Just to be clear, are we talking here about the center as in being the center of the English teaching world or we're talking more about the center of the English speaking world or are we talking about both?

Amol: Eventually both, but at the moment all the current decentering, thinking and initiative that is underway and it was initiated by the Hornby Trust in the UK. Hornby Trust was set up by A.S. Hornby especially with the purpose of spending all the money and the resources he has handed out to the trust.

For the third weekend, I'm using a slightly loaded term here, but what he meant was he spent all his life working in those countries and learnt a lot from there. Even Oxford dictionary was an outcome of his work there.

He argued in the trust document that whatever he earned working in those communities should go back to those communities and that's why Hornby Trust is supporting this initiative. At the moment, the focus is on English language teaching world, the ELT world.

In this world, the most prominent, most visible, most easily identifiable center is the West or what Adrian Holiday call the BANA countries, Britain, Australia and North America. That is the most easily identifiable center. In the decentering initiative, we take a more complex and nuanced view.

We assume that globally this may be the center but there are also lots of local centers. There are centers everywhere and decentering has to deal with all centers and all centering practices wherever they happen.

Ross: Do you want to give us some examples of this then Amol? I think the first thing that crossed my mind when I heard this was the idea of sending so‐called native speakers to different parts of the world as "experts" in inverted commas, as being one being symptom of centering, is that right? If it is right, then what are some oth...

I speak with Professor Anne Burns about teaching speaking. Why discuss why teaching speaking is so difficult, the differences between teaching speaking and just practicing it and look at an example of an activity of how to teach speaking.

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Anne Burns | Arts & Social Sciences - UNSW Sydney