Routes Into The Sky (Photo taken from http://www.highton-ridley.co.uk)

Here is another of my poems, one I wrote for my sister Gina when I was 20 years old – and once again I am honoured to have the wonderful Mieke Kenis read it and give life to it with her beautiful voice. Thank you so much again, Mieke!

Ascending – Read by Mieke Kenis

Skype proved a great tool for our learning (Image taken from http://www.skype.com)

Before I get to the point of this post, I need to say two things:

- A great number of posts and articles have been written about teaching with Skype, but this experience was so helpful and eye-opening for me that I feel the need to share it : )

- For some who might not know, I used to have a school in Greece and had to leave my wonderful students behind when I moved to Switzerland.

So here goes…

Vassilis is a wonderful person and student that my sister first and (a little bit later) I have taught ever since he was eight. (He is now…gulp – twenty-three!) He is a graduate student of the Business and Economics University of Athens, Greece, in the Department of Informatics. We have kept in touch even after I left (as with a great number of our students) and one day he was telling me that he wanst to do a post-graduate abroad so he needs IELTS. We talked about it and in the midst of nostalgia for our lessons with him in the past I blurted out, “I can teach you if you like.” “How?” he asked. “Via Skype.” “Do you think it’s gonna work?” “We can try and see!” I answered.

So, that’s how we started : )

How can you use Skype?

- The video feature is great, but not that necessary. It is wonderful to see your student’s face, expressions and feel like you are in the same room with them, but with Vassilis we rarely used it. Perhaps at the beginning of the lesson it makes the lesson more personal – it is great to see each other!

- It was mainly useful for us for the audio, and you can practise speaking extensively with the student – with Vassilis, I listened to him, corrected him on the spot when needed and used the chat box on the bottom right of the Skype screen to write notes for him, or synonyms to vocabulary he used.

- The chat box: It can be used as a virtual blackboard to write simple notes, which you can hand over to the student simply by pressing Enter. Using the Send File feature (which you can find on the button with the plus sign) you can share PDF or other files, pictures if you are doing picture description with your students – they open the files and the conversation goes on while various things are done in the meantime. Sometimes I immediately shared files with Vassilis if I felt I had to give him more material on something. Emoticons can also be used for reinforcement!

- Sure, there can be tech glitches (choppy sound or video, connection cuts out and so on) but investing in a good internet connection is one of the things I have never looked back on for all it has to offer. Or simply enough, you can just hang up and call again! It usually works.

Classrooms can Skype into each other! (Image taken from http://www.skype.com)

Skype can be used in so many more ways in education and I am looking forward to using it even more! I have also included some fantastic posts on using Skype below.

• Sandy Millin has included Skype in her post Tools for the 21st Century Teacher.
• Aviva Dunsiger uses Skype with her class to communicate with other classes. Here is one of her posts on using Skype, Does It Matter? where she reflects on her students’ experiences on a topic, after Skyping into another class.
• Joan Young has written various posts on using Skype with her class in the United States- one of them is Brave New year: 5 Ideas to Venture Forth where she mentions Skyping with Greta Sandler‘s class in Argentina! Greta also writes about this experience in her post Diving Into a Skyping Adventure.
• Shelly Sanchez Terrell has an amazing wealth of information and tips on how to use Skype in the classroom, along with a webinar on her wiki, Technolgy4Kids.

If any of you have written a post on teaching with Skype, I will be very happy to include a link to your blog here. If you have used any more features of Skype I do not have here (and I am sure there are lots more!) please let me know. I’d love to learn, as I am sure I can use more features in the future and make use of its full potential!

The WordPress.com stats helper monkeys prepared a 2011 annual report for this blog.

Here’s an excerpt:

The concert hall at the Syndey Opera House holds 2,700 people. This blog was viewed about 26,000 times in 2011. If it were a concert at Sydney Opera House, it would take about 10 sold-out performances for that many people to see it.

Click here to see the complete report.

2011 has been for the main part a great year for me – I would like to say thank you to all of you for making it so special! I have felt so inspired this year, be it from working with great people and students, participating in conferences, online chats on Twitter (such as ELTChat and finnedchat) with amazing educators from around the world from whom I have learnt and who have challenged my thinking, interviewing some and being interviewed as well, meeting some for the first time and seeing old friends, writing blog posts, taking part in fantastic projects like the iTDi project!

May 2012 be great as well, full of health and happiness for all of us. 

I wish everybody Happy Holidays and a Happy New Year! All the best!

Martin Sketchley has been teaching English as a foreign language for six years. He taught for three and a half years in South Korea for various private language institutes. During this period, he was a BULATS Examiner and assisted in introducing the exam to this region of Asia. Martin returned to the UK and recently completed an MA in English Language Teaching at the University of Sussex. Currently, he is a Cambridge ESOL Examiner for B1 and B2 CEF level examinations, works at a local language school in Eastbourne and maintains a blog (www.eltexperiences.com). Finally, Martin is now seeking for a publisher to assist his authoring of a book related to his experiences of language teaching and education in South Korea.

Personal Background to Teaching English in South Korea

Martin at the Wall Street Institute in South Korea

I started teaching English as a foreign language in South Korea in December 2005 unqualified, inexperienced and totally out of my depth. As is common in South Korea, all budding English teachers require a degree in any subject and the enthusiasm to teach young learners or adults in a variety of settings. I started my teaching career teaching young learners and teenagers in a small private school in a small rural Korean village. This provided the beginnings of what is now a rewarding and interesting career. After completing one year of teaching at this small private school, I decided to commence a four week CELTA Course at the British Council in Seoul in February 2007. The rest is, as they say, history.

ELT in South Korea

English was initially introduced to Korea with the use of Christianity between the mid-fourteenth and early twentieth century (1392-1910). After the Japanese colonisation period of Korea (1910-1945), English was reintroduced to South Korea due to the Korean War, directly from the US Army (Shin 2007: pg.77). English Language Teaching was firmly established in South Korea within the 1990s, and prior to this, English was taught predominately by grammar translation and rote memorisation methods. However, Kim Young-Sam (a previous President of South Korea), persuaded the Ministry of Education to adopt a more “communicative English curriculum” (Shin 2007: pg.77). There has been slow change to adopt the ‘communicative approach’ of English language teaching, now commonly referred to as Communicative Language Teaching (CLT), inasmuch that the current President, Lee Myoung-bak, when he first came into power, asserted that the teaching of English should be in English so that Koreans are able to “communicate with Americans” (Shim 2009: pg.106). Consequently, this has implications for not only Native English Teachers (NETs) but also Non-Native English Teachers (NNETs). There is an expectation, due to current political pressure and the recent educational reforms, which encourage NNETs to teach English in their L2. Furthermore, these recent changes urge the Ministry of Education to implement “a national English proficiency examination that concentrates on practical English” (Shim 2009: pg.107). Although educational reforms have been implemented by the Korean Government, a study in 2006 reported that South Koreans spent an annual $15.3bn on private English lessons and $752m on tests such as the TOEFL (Card, 2006). It is believed that “incompetence in English … is claimed to have cost South Korea important business opportunities” (Song 2011: pg.36) and that Koreans have no option but to focus their financial resources to English learning. There are claims that some “parents will spend the equivalent of a month’s salary … on monthly [English] tuition” (Demick, 2002), with some parents deciding on extreme ‘linguistic surgery’ for their children so that they are “better able to pronounce” (ibid.) particular words thereby giving them a more ‘competitive edge’ in English. So how come South Koreans spend so much money on English education? Park (2009) considers the current ‘English fever¹’ within South Korea is due to a Korean’s belief that education, albeit English in this case, is regarded as “the most powerful means to achieve upward social mobility and economic prosperity” (ibid. pg.50). The ‘national religion’ of acquiring English in South Korea is a big industry, with many Korean mothers pressurising their children to learn English with the belief that it obviously would improve their future employment prospects (Park 2009: pg.50). However, English in Korea is “a language hardly or never used in everyday communication” (Song 2011: pg.36) but has become an integral measurement in Korean educational performance.

Martin teaching children in South Korea

The English Speaker Model in South Korea

The native speaker model is commonly implemented in South Korea, with Inner Circle teachers being recruited. Kirkpatrick (2007) noted that the Korean Government “decided to employ 1,000 native speaker English teachers in its schools” (ibid. pg.185), with advertisements in various Korean newspapers. There was an advertisement in the Korea Herald (www.koreaherald.com) which sought the following expected native speakers of English:

Type 1 teachers require a Certificate in TESOL or three years full-time teaching experience with a graduate degree in TESOL or experience and interest in Korean culture and language.

Type 2 teachers only have to be native speakers of English with a bachelor’s degree in any field.

(Kirkpatrick 2007: pg.185)

The above advertisement could require Type 1 prospective native teachers, at minimum, to have ‘experience and interest in Korean culture and language’, which was my situation late 2005. However, this raises one important matter whether native teachers, without any formal background or experience in teaching or education, are the best models for English education in the Expanding Circle. Nonetheless, what is and what defines a ‘native speaker’ of English? If English is now the lingua franca, are we not all ‘native speakers’ of a variety of English? A stereotypical ‘native’ speaker of English, in the opinion of South Koreans, is an individual who is considered from the Inner Circle. Kachru & Nelson (2001) refer to a ‘native speaker’ as “someone who learned a language in a natural setting childhood as first or sole language” (ibid. pg.15). However, Medgyes (1992) noted that there is a certain amount of ambiguity by defining the native and non-native speaker (ibid. pg. 340-341). Additionally, issues arise in relation to World Englishes which question “who can be labelled a NS or a NNS because a single norm for standard English no longer exists” (Higgins 2003: pg.616). Higgins (2003) also suggests that in an attempt to move away from the native and non-native speaker model, “scholars have employed a concept of ownership to investigate speakers’ ideological stances toward English” (pg.617). There are critics to the concept of native or non-native ‘ownership of English’, stating “things will fall apart and the [English] language will divide up into mutually unintelligible varieties” (Widdowson 1994: pg.383) if there is any diversification. However, there is some hegemonic assumption that Inner Circle speakers will be communicating with Outer or Expanding Circle speakers, or vice-versa, and, furthermore, to maintain some mutual understanding, Outer or Expanding Circle speakers must employ a normative variety of English to be intelligible with Inner Circle speakers. However, pedagogically, there is a suggestion for English professionals to expose varieties of English in the ESL or EFL classroom. It is noted “that being exposed to several varieties in the classroom can help learners become aware that the success of communication with other English speakers does not necessarily rely on the [expected normative] forms of English they produce” (Suzuki 2010: pg.146). Suzuki (2010) also highlights the lack of teacher awareness, during teacher training programmes, in relation to the diversity of English and the potential effects (ibid. pg.146-151) and she recommends that preparing teachers, as well as learners, for the diversity of English would encourage understanding and appreciation of non-standard varieties of English for both the teacher as well as the learner (Suzuki 2010: pg.152-153). There is additional ambiguity, within South Korea, in classifying a ‘native’ or ‘non-native’ speaker of English, as there could be some countries which use English as an official language, such as in India or Singapore, which may be perceived with less ‘prestige’ due to their ‘endonormative’ variety of English. A news article in early July 2008, from the Philippines, stated that those eligible for a Korean E2, Foreign Language Instructor, Visa to teach English in South Korea include “the United States, Canada, United Kingdom, Australia, New Zealand, South Africa and Ireland” (GMA News 2008, www.gmanews.tv) due to their ‘exonormative’ English policy. However, a South Korean news article which was published at the end of 2008 stated that English speakers from the Outer Circle “from India and other countries that use English as an official language will be able to teach at public schools from the following year” (The Korea Times 2008, www.koreatimes.co.kr). This demonstrated that there was some recognition, from the South Korean government as well as parent groups, with particular English speakers from the Outer Circle becoming more acceptable to teach English. Does this demonstrate a greater awareness and acceptability for the diversity of English? Well it is a positive step in the right direction but, as Shin (2007) pointed out, “the NS as an ideal teacher legitimizes the substitution of language politics for racial politics in ELT” (ibid: pg.79). Shim (2002) recognised that within Korea, there was “a strong preference for American English and a unanimous unwillingness to participate in a programme that would introduce them to non-native English varieties” (in Jenkins 2007: pg.101).

Further Reading

Card, J. (2006) Appetite for language costs S Korea dear. London: The Guardian. Available from: http://www.guardian.co.uk/education/2006/dec/15/tefl (accessed 4 April 2011).

Demick, B. (2002) Some in S. Korea Opt for a Trim When English Trips the Tongue. LA: Los Angeles Times. Available from: http://articles.latimes.com/2002/mar/31/news/mn-35590 (accessed 20 April 2011).

GMA News (2008) RP to Korea: Let Pinoys teach English in schools. Manila: GMA News. Available from: http://www.gmanews.tv/print/106224 (accessed 28 April 2011).

Harris, R. (2005) Roadmap to Korea: Everything you ever wanted to know about the language 2^nd Edition. Hollym: Seoul, Korea.

Higgins, C. (2003) ‘“Ownership” of English in the Outer Circle: An Alternative to NS-NNS Dichotomy’. TESOL Quarterly, 37(4), pp. 615-644.

Jenkins, J. (2007) English as a Lingua Franca: Attitude and Identity. Oxford: Oxford University Press.

Kachru, B. B. & Nelson, C. L. (2001) ‘World English’ in Burns, A. & Coffin, C. (eds) Analysing English in a Global Context. London: Routledge, pp. 9-25.

Kang, S. W. (2008) Non-Natives Can Become English Teachers. Seoul: The Korean Times. Available from: http://www.koreatimes.co.kr/www/news/nation/2008/12/117_36881.html (accessed 20 April 2011).

Kirkpatrick, A. (2007) World Englishes: Implications for International Communication and English Language Teaching. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

Krashen, S. D. (2011) Stephen D Krashen: Dealing with English Fever. Available from: http://www.sdkrashen.com/articles/fever/index.html (accessed 22 April 2011).

Medgyes, P. (1992) ‘Native or non-native: who’s worth more?’ ELT Journal, 46(4), pp. 340-349.

Park, J. K. (2009) ‘‘English fever’ in South Korea: its history and symptoms’. English Today 97, 25(1), pp. 50-57.

Shim, R. J. (2002) ‘Changing attitudes toward TEWOL in Korea’. Journal in Asian Pacific Studies. 12(1) in Jenkins, J. (2007) English as a Lingua Franca: Attitude and Identity. Oxford: Oxford University Press.

Shim, R. J. (2009) Plenary: Empowering EFL students through teaching World Englishes in IATEFL 2008: Exeter Conference Selections edited by B. Beaven, April 7-11 2008. IATEFL: Kent.

Shin, H. (2007) ‘English Language Teaching in Korea: Toward Globalization or Glocalization?’, in Cummings, J. & Davison, C. (ed.) International Handbook of English Language Teaching. Springer: New York, pp. 75-86.

Song, J. J. (2011) ‘English as an official language in South Korea: Global English or social malady?’ Language Problems & Language Planning, 35(1), pp. 35-55.

Suzuki, A. (2010) ‘Introducing diversity of English in ELT: student teachers’ responses’. ELT Journal. 65(2), pp. 145-153.

Widdowson, H. G. (1994) ‘The Ownership of English’. TESOL Quarterly, 28(2), pp. 377-389.

In the morning, the International Teachers Development Institute, known as iTDi, had organised a great set of webinars, co-ordinated by presenters none other than the super Shelly Terrell and Steven Herder. Speakers included Chuck Sandy, Luke Meddings, Scott Thornbury, Jonh Fanselow and Marcos Benevides. Great speakers, fantastic educators and people we could all listen to, free of charge, from the comfort of our own homes or workplaces. It is amazing and I still wonder at what technology has helped us all do!

After the iTDi webinar, followed TeachMeet International, another webinar organised and co-ordinated by a fantastic educator in Croatia, Arjana Blazic and a super one in Belgium I hope to meet in the future, Bart Verswijvel. Sonja Lusic-Radosevic, a colleague of Arjana’s (the two of them have created a fantastic website for Croatian students, Moja Matura) was the tech sepcialist and took great screenshots of all the speakers!

The great and original thing about TeachMeet was that each speaker had just three minutes to speak. We heard some fantastic people speaking and learned a lot. It was great for me, as I realised I can speak in three minutes (as I can be a big chatterbox! Ha ha!).

Both were fantastic experiences, full of energy and inspiration. It is great and all of us as educators are so fortunate to have these events going on.

Screenshot from TeachMeet (taken by Elinda Gjondedaj, English teacher from Greece)

So whenever you find out about something like this, be sure to let your colleagues know as well! Not all of them may join, but some have taken the plunge into social media, never looking back.

Congratulations to you all and thank you for everything you do! (Image taken from http://www.afamousartist.com)

These past two years, I have been connecting with educators everywhere in the world, either through Twitter, Nings, Wikis – you name it! I have learned and am still learning from them daily and I would like to say a big thank you for that.I have been so fortunate to meet some of you in person and I am sure I will be meeting lots of you in the future!

A few days ago my blog reached the fifth place in the finalists in the Edublog Awards, which was great news for me and a big thank you to everyone who nominated me, voted for me, supported me and the blog I have been writing for two years now. Lots of teachers were given awards in the Edublogs and lots are receiving recognition every day, either in awards ceremonies, their schools, conferences and meetings, from their students, the students’ parents, colleagues and employers.

Taking all this into consideration, I would like to congratulate each and everyone of you out there because everything you do daily is a great step, a great stone for the building of education.

A lot of you go to school sick, overworked, tired, sleepless in order to ensure your students a great education.

A lot of you skip lunch in order to teach your kids extra classes, or come home late for dinner because you were wrapping up things at school.

A lot of you are underpaid and have access to minimal resources, but you still manage to make a difference and offer your students everything you can, even if that means taking up second jobs or digging deep into your pockets to give your kids everything they need in school.

A lot of you have been through terrible storms in your lives, either in your personal life or in your health, but you still manage to pull through and be back for your kids.

With all my heart, congratulations! Keep doing what you are doing and think that it is worth every minute. I know and I understand, that sometimes it feels like an uphill road and everything is working against us. But take a minute to think how much you love this profession and everything that comes along with it – and hang in there because we all need you! You deserve a big pat on the back, handshake, hug – whatever you prefer!

Happy Birthday dear blog...with chocolate cake, my favourite! (Image taken from lavenderbakery.wordpress.com)

Two years ago, on the 10th of December – after having started to read Ken Wilson‘s blog and then more and more blogs, I decided to start my own.

In the beginning, I thought – who is going to read it? What if they think what I write is silly? I started with my first piece and it all kind of flowed from there – it progressed and I started thinking about some topics, which developed into blog posts. Reading the old ones again, some I like and some I do not like at all! I believe writing my blog has improved my writing skills, my thinking process (because in the past it was completely stream of consciousness – not that now my thinking is boxed, but I organise it much better and it is not all over the place).

I have been very fortunate to have had great readers and comments – each and every one of them has made me think. And I thank all of the fantastic people who have commented for that.

I have also had amazing guest bloggers honour me with their posts – another big thank you to them!

This year I started my first blog challenge, What’s Your Story? which started on October 9th and is still running, thanks to all the people who are writing for it and reading it!

This year I started presenting again and published my talks on the blog – and I am really enjoying giving talks as an experience.

This year finds my blog nominated in two categories in the Edublog Awards – a big THANK YOU to everyone who put me there. I really appreciate it and it has boosted my motivation to keep writing even more.

So…HAPPY BIRTHDAY TO ALL OF US! The blog, me, you, everyone! A million thanks!

James Taylor

I am very happy that a very good friend, James Taylor, has accepted to read another poem I have written. James is a super person and educator who lives in Belgium.

I was very happy and fortunate to meet him in person here in Zug two months ago and then see him again in Paris almost two weeks ago!

Read his super blog! James has some great educational ideas there.

A big thank you to James for giving a tone of hope to this poem, which I had never seen before. Listen to his recording here.

Mieke Kenis

It all started last night when Mieke Kenis, a super person and educator from Belgium, and I were chatting about how we both love poetry – Mieke told me she reads poems sometimes and records them on Audioboo. I love her voice and the way she reads. So then I told her that I (think I) write poems, so I recorded my poem Hair on Audioboo. Mieke listened to it and returned me the nicest present ever – herself reading Hair, in the absolutely most beautiful way. She gave such life to my poem, it really moved me and I thank her so very much for that. Here is the recording of Mieke reading it so beautifully:

Hair - Read by Mieke Kenis, Written by Vicky Loras

Thank you so much, Mieke!

* Mieke has started a blog.