Rachel Bull: handing the discovery back to the learners

Why did you decide to join the Emergent Language Toolkit course?

I decided to join the course after coming across some posts that you made on LinkedIn and that got me interested. And then, um, I attended a workshop that you did, um, which really fitted with some questions that I’d had about emergent language.

And I found an interview with you on TESOL pop with Laura and those three things together, um, gave me the feeling that working with you as a trainer and working with the topic of emergent language would be the right thing for me at the moment.

And I was hoping to get more of a handle on how to meaningfully organise and work with and record the massive language that comes out of a class.

So the principle was clear to me, but so much comes up in a class. I was hoping to get a bit more… clarity on how to meaningfully select what to work with and then what to do with it, how to work with it further.

So we were introduced to a good few online tools that I’ve never come across before that were fairly simple and didn’t require big logins from the students who would be working with them, and also materials that Lewis has put together to be part of the course.

Which tools or frameworks form the course helped you work more confidently with Emergent Language?

So the ones which stick out for me, I can’t name one because all of them were really, really useful.

So we had a worksheet called Follow the Thread, which is looking at language which has come up from the class, but then looking at how it could be used in context with students other words together, using a tool called Skell to see some example sentences of how this word or this phrase is used in the wild and encouraging students to think about how the conversation or how the sentence might continue, what maybe came before, came after.

A couple of tools for generating conversation or generating communication. We used a wheel and we used… sorting and categorising activities, which are things obviously I’ve used before over the decades that I’ve been teaching.

But Lewis showed us a particular tool for organizing those things on the screen. Also really easy for participants to get access to and use themselves.

So having a look again at some of the new vocabulary that’s come up and then using categorising, sorting to work with it again and to make it more personal for the learners in the group.

What surprised you about the course?

What surprised me during the course was that working with emergent language seems to be… so the art of working with emergent language is more about handing over the discovery to the learners.

So showing what we’ve collected and then saying, okay, here it is.

Now try this, try this, try this. And… having them discover new things about the vocabulary and offering them options, which ones are relevant to you, which ones are not so relevant to you, which ones don’t really fit your style of communication, rather than me as the trainer producing more material, which was my tendency before.

So here’s the language that’s come out. I need to create or prepare something with it to bring back to the class.

And what was surprising for me, or I don’t know, refreshing for me was how… how Lewis showed us to take that language, form it a little bit, but then hand it back to the people in the class for them to do the discovery or do the work with it.

What impact did the course have on your teaching?

So thinking about the impact of the course on my teaching, one thing I’d pick up from the last couple of weeks, I really, that I, implemented during the course was setting up tasks for the group to do with the language that had come out of the class.

So related to the thing that surprised me as in working with emergent language isn’t so much about me formulating tasks for people to do with the new language, but preparing it for them, to do something with themselves.

So I think that has been the most immediate impact that I’ve used that technique with a few classes already while the course was still going on.

How easy was it to apply the ideas from the course to your own teaching context?

So I’m really glad. The practicality of this course is very high.

So it was very easy to apply what we learned step by step, I think, because it’s better as a trainer to feel quite confident in order for the learners to feel confident in what you’re doing, introducing one thing at a time.

And I was able to start using the ideas really straight away. And that was quite integral to the course because the live sessions that we had together were very much about reflecting on our experiences with students putting things into practice.

So it was immediately usable and very, very applicable.

Would you recommend the course?

So I would definitely recommend the course specifically to teachers with a bit of classroom experience, maybe experience of some of the common issues which come up among the groups in the place where they’re teaching.

Teachers who’ve got a bit more confidence about reacting on the spot. So after some practice in the classroom, not feeling kind of thrown off guard if questions come up that were not expected.

And teachers who have already had a bit of practice in offering examples or explaining examples of things or thinking of other examples of how a piece of language might be used.

Which teachers would benefit most from taking the course?

In our group, we had different teaching contexts, even in a small group. We had working with larger groups, working with younger people, teenage learners, working with one-to-one groups, working with in-company groups, working online, working in a classroom.

And I would say for absolutely all of those contexts, the input in this course is absolutely relevant, usable, applicable.

What would you say to another teacher who’s thinking about joining the course?

And if another teacher was thinking about joining the course but wasn’t really sure, I would say it’s excellent quality. The materials are excellent quality.

It’s a suitable amount of input and material for the time that’s available. And it was really great to have the opportunity to try out new things and then reflect on them with colleagues from a different context or location.

But the reflective practice, I think, has been really great, really very valuable for me and it’s extremely extendable so it fits lots and lots of different contexts it’s not um time bound so it’s not something that will go out of date or the materials that we looked at are not things that will will become dated.

So that’s what I would say to anybody who’s wondering if they should join or not it’s been a really valuable helpful course for me and i would absolutely heartily recommend it.