Teflpedia:Teachers’ room

Hi. There's tea or coffee for those who want it.--Bob M 10:35, 4 June 2009 (UTC)

Greetings All! There is currently a heated debate going on here as to how much communication is non-verbal, urban legends, etc. It's a free-for-all and your input is welcome. Cheers! --Technopat 14:00, 10 June 2009 (UTC)

Another debate open is whether testing is a different enough concept to warrant its own article as opposed to being a part of the assessment article. Feedback? --Technopat 18:20, 17 June 2009 (UTC)

The pound

On a more general point, the pound seems to picking up.--Bob M 20:57, 17 June 2009 (UTC)

101+ Conversation questions

Greetings, Folks! Just thought you might be interested in checking out some of the great Conversation questions available here at Teflpedia, as well as a newish sister page of Quick conversation questions. Additions welcome! Cheers! --Technopat 18:37, 2 July 2009 (UTC)

Polarisin' the conversation... Sorry! Couldn't resist that one! :)

Greetings Bob M. I know that you like to de-polar as much as possible, and in the broad, general whatchamallit, I agree with you. However, my criteria is that if the normal question I would ask a native speaker is a polar question, then that's the question I ask me students.

That often means that the initial question requires a simple yes/no answer (although I do insist on the need for the aux.) - which must be immediately followed up with a wh-question.

In other words, rather than construct some grammatically-intriguing-but-artificial question to obtain a grammatically-satisfying response, I encourage that first yes/no answer (+ do/does/am/is/would etc.) in order to engage 'em in the conversation - they usually have much more to say on the matter, and I find the problem isn't so much getting 'em to talk, but getting 'em to stop... Topic for the Teachers' room? --Technopat 10:37, 6 July 2009 (UTC) Yes, so I've cut it here. Bob

Hi TP. Well, it depends. If the teacher is managing the conversation process from the front of the class with a small group who are communicating with him/her then the questions can really be totally polar, as the teacher can follow up each one with, "Really? Why do you think that?" But in a situation where the class has been split up into pairs or groups which are talking to themselves it's not so easy. Even if you tell students that the objective is to turn each question into a short conversation there are still some who are capable of treating the yes/no ones as just that and fly through them. (This is usually the case where there are two young males together for some reason, girls seem to be a bit more prepared to be chatty.)

Also I'm not actually trying to generate any particular grammatical response. Just trying to avoid a yes/no response. Obviously if the teacher has the questions as a crib sheet in from of him/her then they can re-word the questions of the fly - but if they're going to distribute them to groups then it would seem to be best to cover all the odds.

Having said all that, if there's a case where I've created something which seems really horribly artificial then please bring it up so that we can make it more natural if necessary.--Bob M 10:56, 6 July 2009 (UTC)

Point taken. If the aim is pairwork, I guess you're right. But that brings us onto the aims and mechanics of pairwork. I take for granted that pairwork is controlled practice and I would have the students work from their own crib sheets. So I would get them to write down their own wh-questions developing on from the initial polar questions when/wherever possible.

By the way, I've used some of the conversation questions as dictation items and students have had to expand on 'em with additional questions off their own bats such as "How often...?", "When did you last...?"

In any case, my underlying whatever-it-is is to avoid teacher talk at all times and to avoid artificial sentences (as in Postilion sentences and the ones they use for drills). --Technopat 11:36, 6 July 2009 (UTC)

OK, well I suppose we all do things differently. The site has various suggestions for using them here. TESl suggests they be used by pairs; ESL partyland suggests they be used as conversation material between students; and that is how I have used them in the past. My objective is to get students talking as naturally as possible and then go round and monitor as far as I can - well it used to be, now all my groups are sufficiently small that I can talk to them all at once. But not everyone is in the same privileged position and you and me and I think it would be best to create something which works well in all situations - and I think that means avoiding polar questions.

However, as I said in my previous post, if any have any horribly artificial constructions then let's talk about them.--Bob M 14:49, 6 July 2009 (UTC)

Technical warning

The management would like to apologise for any erratic behaviour or turbulence which may be experienced during the present flight. We are confident that normal service will be restored in short order. In the meantime we encourage all our passengers to partake of the complementary tea, biscuits and gin which will be served by our charming hostesses shortly.--Admin 16:58, 8 July 2009 (UTC)

Shortly is an unusual name for a woman. Genghis Khant 04:47, 20 August 2009 (UTC)

RW invasion

We are presently playing host to some friends of mine from another which which is experiencing technical problems. Some strange things may appear until the end of August. Users are welcome to ignore them or join in as they see fit.--Bob M 06:26, 20 August 2009 (UTC)

This wiki needs goat. There's only one mention of the lovely beast on the whole site. Totnesmartin 09:56, 20 August 2009 (UTC)

Limits

Ok, we already have WIGO ASK and a couple of non-education-related pictures up. What are the limits? userboxen? WIGOs? I assume this page stands in for the saloon bar. Totnesmartin 11:08, 20 August 2009 (UTC)

Personally I think we should minimise impact as much as possible - keep it clean, maybe add a general category of 'RationalWiki' to mark anything we add so that Bob can go through once we get back up and running and clean everything up? THe more we add, the more cleaning up will be required at the end. IMHO. Worm 11:17, 20 August 2009 (UTC)

If we keep all the RW/lulzy stuff to specific pages then yes, it'll be easier for Bob to tidy up after, and also won't confuse anyone coming here for its intended purpose - so, no snark/parody in education-related articles, everyone. Likewise, I don't know what age group reads this site, but let's keep it clean anyway. Totnesmartin 11:51, 20 August 2009 (UTC)

Concur - I think the RatWiki category is a splendid idea. And also we should follow Martin's good example and pay the rent when we can. SuperJosh 11:58, 20 August 2009 (UTC)

Exam results

Don't know where else to post it and seeing as here's the general talkering point...

I got my exam results today and I've got into the university of my first choice. Needless to say I'm ecstatic! Lots of irresponsible drinking tonight! SuperJosh 11:58, 20 August 2009 (UTC)