The Homework Dilemma

A while ago I posted a survey on Twitter which 286 people were kind enough to respond to. The topic was Homework and the survey informed a large part of a talk I gave at ELT Ireland's 2017 conference. I've attached the slides here. It's taken me ages to get around to writing up the results of the survey but it's a nice bright day in Ireland, I'm back off my honeymoon and I've just submitted a final assignment so I thought I'd have a crack now.

Context

I'm a big fan of homework. In the past, I gave students homework intermittently and without a lot of thought (e.g. "finish that part at home", "talk to someone about.....") and the response was lacklustre. Then I started putting a lot more thought into the homework I gave and made it a routine of every lesson (set it at the end of class, discuss it with everyone, check it first thing the next day). It seemed to go over well so I've stuck doing it over the years. But as with all things, you start off doing it for a reason and then, after a while, you keep doing it because that's what you always do. So that's why I chose the topic to give a presentation on and why I wanted to know a bit more about what other teachers do. I was also curious to know a little bit more about other teachers' working conditions which I hoped to get a glimpse off through a discussion of homework.

The Participants

In total, there were 21 questions. The first 8 were to get basic information about teaching experience, qualifications, country (I wasn't interested so much in the nationality of the teachers, rather the country where they currently worked). By a fair margin, the most responses came from Ireland (75).

Country	Number (percentage of total)
Ireland	75 (26.2%)
Poland	40 (14%)
UK	19 (6.6%
Spain	15 (5.2%)
New Zealand	13 (4.5%)
United States	9 (3.1%)
Australia	8 (2.8%)
Greece	8 (2.8%)
Saudi Arabia	7 (2.4%)
France	5 (1.7%)

Table 1: The ten countries with the highest response rates

The majority of respondents had been working in ELT for over 10 years but I did get a good few responses from people who hadn't been working in ELT all that long. 

The majority of the respondents worked in private language schools but I also had a good few responses from people who worked in state schools and universities. To be fair, I was especially interested in responses from those work in private language schools. One, because that's the context I've spent most of my teaching career in. And two, because I was curious to know a bit more about homework practices in private language schools where homework might be a bit less expected/normal than in primary or secondary schools (61% of the respondents teach adults, 17% teach kids and 22% teach both adults and kids). 

Frequency

Most of the questions were close-ended - it was a survey online and I wanted lots of responses and was wary of asking too much of people timewise - and tended to be about quantity. So for example, I found that 23.4% of respondents always give homework and 39.2% usually give homework. Only 9.8% tend not to give homework (4% said that they never give homework). This seemed to suggest a lot more homework was being given than I had expected. When I filtered it according to whether they taught adults, the results didn't change all that much. So basically, this burst two conceptions I had - one, that ELT teachers don't give homework all that regularly and two, that teaching adults would mean a bit less homework being given out. 

Attitudes

I asked a few likert scale questions as well to get a sense of teacher's attitudes to homework (and also teachers attitudes about students' attitudes to homework - this might sound a bit arsey but I figure that if we think our students hate homework that might influence how much of it we give). Not surprisingly, seeing as most people are lashing out the homework, attitudes were fairly positive (see below)

Interestingly, they were a bit less positive when asked to guess at their students' attitudes to homework. The three responses chosen most frequently were: students accept it without enthusiasm (52.1%); most welcome it (26.2%); most hate it (14.3%). Again, this ratio didn't change much when I filtered it for those teaching adults. 

Working Conditions

I asked two questions which I hoped might reveal a little something about teachers' working conditions. The first question asked whether they were encouraged to give homework in their schools. 64% said yes, 12% said no (there were other responses which fell outside of these two opposites). Again, I found this interesting as I have only ever once been encouraged to give students homework in 15 years of teaching. 

The second question I asked was whether their rate of pay covered correcting students' homework outside of class. 21.6% were in the fortunate position of being able to answer yes; 70% said no. About 8% of respondents were not sure. This was a bit of a controversial question as you could well imagine an employer believing homework corrections were included in someone's rate of pay. Interestingly, on the day of the talk, I went to another talk by Bárbara Hernandes about non-native discrimination in Ireland in which she shared a job ad that required "native speakers only". It was a really good talk but I repurposed that job ad for my own talk - not only was it discriminatory but they were only offering €18 an hour. I questionned whether that type of rate (which is not the worst - I've seen €14 an hour a few times) could reasonably be expected to cover prep, teaching and homework correction. To put it in context, the minimum wage in Ireland is €9.25 an hour.

Optimism or Concern?

At first, looking at the results, I was a bit bummed out. In one question, 190 teachers said that one problem they have is that they often end up with loads of correcting to do outside class hours, despite the fact that they're not paid to do this. In a few of the open questions at the end of the survey, a few people said that they had given up setting homework as correcting it was taking too much time that they weren't compensated for. 

As someone who likes homework and believes that it can help students improve, I didn't want to finish by saying that we shouldn't give homework unless we're paid to correct it (although maybe that is a valid conclusion?). In an open question, I asked teachers to share their ideas of what good homework is and many of them were brilliant - stuff that would help students and inform subsequent lessons so that it wouldn't result in tons of unpaid work for the teacher. 

There was some good stuff like this:

My students are better engaged in project based homework our interactive forum/collaborative items posted on class website. Example: choose a simple process and use a photo collage app on your phone to take pictures of each step. In class, they present and then use the collage as jumping off point for writing a process essay. Completely different level of engagement than asking students to choose a process and explain to classmates tomorrow.

 Setting up extensive reading activity where each student reads an article on a topic (e.g. Student A reads about technology, Student B about health etc) and then share their summaries in class. Works very well - no prep and maximum student learning.

This one really solved the problem of burden on teacher:

I provide a lot of self-study homework, by which I mean homework and answers, and it is not checked in class. This way I can provide students with an adequate amount of homework without having to spend too much class time correcting it. I have found that most of my students do indeed complete the homework even though it is not checked in class - they understand fully the idea of maximising class time

Overall

What I took from this survey is that teachers are amazing. 286 of my colleagues took the time to contribute to this survey and gave considered, helpful responses (there were one or two spicy comments on my questionnaire-making skills but even those were helpful!). And despite the fact that most of them don't get paid to correct homework, they're still dishing it out regardless of the consequences for their personal time because they believe it helps their students. I think this is commendable and I would hope that this level of commitment to the welfare of their students is appreciated (and acknowledged) by whoever is lucky enough to employ them.  

ELT Ireland Conference 2017

When I started teaching back in 2001, it seemed like there were tons of opportunities for CPD in Dublin. Every couple of weeks there'd be a talk at the Teacher's Club in Parnell Square, usually on a Friday evening so the discussion could spill over into a nearby pub. I saw talks by lots of the big names without realizing that they were big names, as well as talks by local teachers who were doing some really interesting things (Dee Doyle sticks in the memory). These talks would invariably be introduced by Jim Ferguson; whenever someone gets round to writing the history of ELT in Ireland, Jim will feature prominently and positively.

And then, I'm not sure when exactly, all that seemed to die down. Going to talks, mingling with colleagues from other schools, nabbing free books from publishers - you couldn't take that stuff for granted any more. I lost myself in exam preparation classes for years and when I looked back up the ELT landscape in Dublin seemed a bit barren, a bit fragmented. We were all still teaching, great things were still happening in classrooms but the sense of belonging to a wider teaching community wasn't there any more (at least, that's how it seemed to me at the time).

Skip forward to around 2013, I think. I was at a talk (they didn't stop altogether) and a stylishly dishevelled chap (I say that enviously as an aspiring, but ultimately failed, hipster) stood up to announce that he was part of a group that were starting an organisation for teachers called ELT Ireland. Not being the most prescient at the best of times, I shrugged and thought no more of it. That was about 3 years ago and since then ELT Ireland have gone on to do fabulous things for teachers here in Dublin, myself included.

Nabbed this photo from Laura O'Grady's Twitter feed. I'm sitting where the cool teachers sit.

Their first conference was two years ago. As well as having talks from established names, they gave a load of us teachers a chance to try our hand at presenting. In the past, I was often frustrated by talks that didn't seem to reflect the reality I teach in. Opening up a forum for teachers in Ireland means you might not get the sheen but the energy, the sense of a practitioner working through stuff and reflecting it back to us is powerful.

ELT Ireland also do an annual bulletin which is a chance for teachers to publish, they send out an email newsletter each week, run #ELTchinwag every two weeks and they host meet ups for managers. Their most recent conference was last week and covered a range of topics: non-native speaker discrimination; evidence based teaching; negotiated syllabi; CLIL; motivation; task based learning; managing your own CPD and teacher training; pronunciation (twice); questions; SEN; managing projects in a rolling enrolment environment as well as plenaries from Scott Thornbury, Silvana Richardson and Anne O'Keeffe. [Sorry there were tons of other great talks that I didn't get to see  - concurrent sessions :( .... If you like, you can check out the hashtag #ELTIrl2017 ]

If this all reads like a hagiography, that's because it is. There are about five or six people involved in ELT Ireland and they're volunteers. It's a ton of work and stress and they're not paid for any of it. Whatever madness possesses them to do this, I'm glad of it. ELT in Ireland is in a better place on account of them.

Peter Lahiff, Laura O'Grady, Lou McLaughlin, Joanne Mitten, Ben Dobbs

What's my (student's) motivation?

I know two actors. One is my former Italian flatmate who once starred alongside Charles Dance in something so obscure that neither he nor Wikipedia remembers the name. The other is my sister-in-law who recently won a best actress award for her portrayal of Jane Eyre. Around these artistic types, desperate to find some common ground, I find myself dribbling on about the parallels between teaching and the stage. I'm not a grey, drab teacher - I'm just like you; I'm an artist!

Like most people, I love a good metaphor* and to be fair (and not too cynical), I do like the actor/teacher/performer parallels, especially when elucidated in terms of positively affecting student learning as opposed to look-at-me-ism. However, my problem with the teacher metaphor is that it rarely goes far enough. Here, I go too far.

Take from http://www.azquotes.com/quote/418194

Parallel Number 1: The matinee

I don't remember who it was (maybe Patrick Stewart), but I heard a story a while back about an actor wandering through a fish market on a Saturday morning and upon seeing the vacant, lifeless eyes of rows and rows of fish, realised with a fright that he had a matinee that afternoon. Like performers in noisy pubs, we often find ourselves teaching people who don't really want to be there. In those cases, we take a deep breath, brace ourselves and whisper the mantra of (show)business.

Parallel Number 2: Stanislavski

Just like us, those actors love their methods. Apparently Robert De Niro was a big fan of drilling. Daniel Day Lewis swears by Task Based Learning. And Meryl Streep is all about audio-lingualism. And similarly, when we get too carried away with our method du jour, there'll likely be a Laurence Olivier type to arch an eyebrow and ask why we don't just try teaching.

Parallel Number 3: Remuneration

Apart from those at the very top of the pile (your Tom Cruises, your Carlos Martins), we're  not on great money, in many cases only paid for the performance/class itself and not all the work going into it (rehearsals/cutting up bits of paper). This exploitation can dampen enthusiasm somewhat but every so often a lucrative gig comes along (flogging nespressos/one year tax free teaching, flights included) to save us from going under.

Parallel Number 4: Selfies

Students regularly ask if they can take a picture with me (it's not just me, all my colleagues get the same request). It happens so frequently that I have a fixed facial expression and body stance that I default to; in every photo it is only the students (and my hairline) that changes. The parallel with actors is so obvious that I barely need to spell it out...but I will anyway. Like actors, we're all bloody gorgeous.

Acting is a good thing to do with your life. Teaching is too.


*Thanks to Michael Griffin of ELT Rants, Reviews and Reflections for sharing via Twitter.

And your chosen subject is....

In the last few weeks, I've been trying out a slightly different way of teaching features of academic writing. I've enjoyed it a lot + nice response from students = so I thought I might share here (and also give props to Richard Ingold, Kallia Crete and Julie Moore).

Basically, it hinges on subjects (as in subject verb object; not Maths, Chemistry, Bio) and three ideas (each one ripped off from the three people named above).

Image taken from bbc.co.uk

What I was trying to do...

Many of my students have good English. But they tend to write like they speak which doesn't sound too academic. I wanted them to see the gap between their writing and more academic writing (for themselves rather than me pointing it out) - but more than that, I wanted them to understand why that gap was there so they'd be able to write in a more conventionally academic way.

Who I stole from...

Richard Ingold - in a recent post I did on abstraction, Richard gave a very detailed explanation in the comments section about how he helps his students improve their writing and understanding of academic conventions. He talked about nouns - this idea that noun groups in academic writing tend to work much harder - they carry a lot more of the sentence's meaning (e.g. (1) Research on exposure to television and movie violence suggests that playing violent video games will increase aggressive behavior). In this example, the subject of the sentence is working hard - a lot of meaning has been conveyed before you get to the verb suggests. 

Kallia Crete - in an excellent post on teaching English for Chemistry, Kallia described a lesson in which she used a magazine article on a scientific topic and the relevant journal article on the same topic to allow students to compare differences in the writing style. She also got her students to come up with rules for academic writing based on their observations of the differences between the two texts. 

At BALEAP 2015, Julie Moore talked about how useful abstracts were as resources. They are shorter than full articles but they display most of the features of academic writing. As well, if you're on the wrong side of pay walls, they're completely free. It also reminded me of something I read recently by Scott Thornbury (I think in Discourse Analysis) in which he talked about how any piece of language, even if very short, can be opened up to display many of the features of the language. 

What I did...

I took an abstract - we'd been talking about video games so this one seemed appropriate (I snipped it and stuck the image at the bottom of this post). So in class, I asked the students to:

• Find the subject in each sentence. 
• Say what they noticed about these subjects. They came up with stuff like:

• The subject tends to be the research (e.g. Experimental and nonexperimental studies with males and females in laboratory and field settings support this conclusion.)
• The subject is long
• The subject is difficult to understand
• The subject is a thing or an idea, not so much a person
• The subject is really really specific
• The subject is working hard (they didn't really say that - but I love that way of thinking about it from Richard Ingold - so I said it, and they agreed with me)

•  Then we had a look at a writing that they had done. They noticed things like:

• In their writing, the subject tended to be a person or 'people' (Many people think....)
• The subject tended to be short.
• If they mentioned research it tended to be just the word "research" - didn't really say where, when, who etc.
• They could understand their subjects
• The subject wasn't working too hard (in response to my leading question..)

• I then asked them to come up with some rules. They came up with stuff like:
• Make ideas/things/research the subject, not so much people
• Make the subject work a bit harder
• So then we took some sample sentences from their work and tried to "academicise" them

• (Student version) If young people play video games, they are more likely to act aggresively

•  (A bit more academic sounding version) Playing violent video games may increase aggressive behaviour in young people

Is that it.....?

Pretty much. 

Getting technical

A few months ago on Twitter, I asked for recommendations for interesting EAP related articles as I had just gotten access to a university library and had plans to do a ton of reading. Good intentions being what they are, I read very few. Fortunately, Richard Ingold, sensing my idleness, sent me a very enthusiastic recommendation recently. Not only was it an interesting article, in tracking it down I also discovered that I have access to a physical library that I had been completely unaware of. Buoyed by all this serendipity, I thought it might be interesting to do a write up of the article.

Reference
Martin, J.R., 1993. Technicality and abstraction: Language for the creation of specialized texts. In A. Burns and C. Coffin, eds. 2001. Analysing English in a global context: a reader. London: Routledge. Ch.13.

Who is it by?
The author is J.R. Martin - I'd not heard of him before but that says more about my ignorance than his renown. He is a professor of Linguistics at the University of Sydney, is known for his work on systemic functional linguistics (SFL) and has a Wikipedia page. I've only done a tiny bit of reading on SFL - the idea (I think) is to look at language from a social perspective; that language is shaped by (and shapes) how we see and experience the world and that by analysing the language a person uses, you can better understand their beliefs or world views. (Richard has a fascinating article here where he uses SFL to analyse a sermon by a religious group called Hillsong).

What is the main argument?
For the guts of the article, Martin analyses examples of technical writing (for example, in science but also in the humanities). He starts by talking about how we classify things - for example, children would group a cow, a horse and a dog as animals; if they come across a new creature (he gives the example of a platypus) they might then question whether they can classify that as an animal. If their parent says yes, platypus is now an animal for the child. Similarly, in science, things are classified according to a system but the logic for that system might not be obvious or intuitive to a non-expert.

He then talks about definitions of technical terms. A technical term might be defined using simple language (e.g. A chromecast is a thing you plug into your telly so you can project your phone screen on to the big screen and watch netflix). Alternatively, a technical term might be explained by placing it in a category (e.g. a chromecast is a type of media streaming device). The former takes a bit more time to write but most people should get the idea from it. The latter is obviously easier for me to write and should be easier to understand if the person knows what a media streaming device is - but it would be incomprehensible if they didn't.

In my first chromecast example above there were lots of verbs (plug, project, watch). In my second chromecast example, the only verb was "is". This leads on to the idea that technical writing features lots of nominalisation or noun phrases as opposed to verbs. For instance, science studies processes but looks at these processes as things. Respiration refers to a process but "respiration" is a noun - the process (respiring) is nominalised (respiration) to make it easier to classify and talk about. So in scientific writing, you end up with lots and lots of nouns/noun phrases. Similarly, in the humanities, you have a lot of nominalisation - when we talk about abstract ideas/concepts (e.g. beauty, environmental damage, a vast increase in taxation). As a result, technical writing can often be accused of being jargon heavy. I get the sense that he thinks this either unfair or unhelpful although he does discuss the way some writing leans heavily on nominalisation as a sign of status.

What I took from it
To be honest, the first time I read through it, I wasn't quite sure if it had relevance to my teaching. I read it again and one particular line jumped out at me - "The main point as far as education is concerned is that students need to learn to read abstract discourse if they are to be functionally literate in our culture and write abstract discourse if they are to interpret their world in a critical way". From what I understand, all this technical laguage in academic writing can be extremely challenging for students - they may understand the concept but not the terms or they may recognise the terms but not understand what they mean or how they relate to other terms. So clearly, there is a lot of work to be done there.

Also, because this aspect of academic writing (the nominalisation heaviness) is never really unpacked for them (by unpack, I mean to look at the key nouns/abstract ideas in a sentence and think about what they mean, how they relate to other concepts in the text), Martin also points out how students often end up writing as they speak. This is something I've noticed a lot with students - their writing tends to be full of personal pronouns and lots of "if" sentences; the focus of the sentence tends to be either a person (often "I") or a thing (often the government) that acts like a person.

My advice to students on this tends to be very lame - "don't use I, it's not academic". I think I've been guilty of teaching academic writing in a do/don't approach - "this is a feature of academic writing - this is not; use obtain, not get; contractions are bad, etc.". In other words, a very micro level type approach. On p.221, Martin looks at a students' writing which is very 'spoken' in style and then suggests how it can be improved - his point being that if the student frames their writing within a thesis, argument, summation model, they will need abstract language. I think I might try more of this kind of thing - take a short essay written in a spoken style and then create a more "academic" article; unpacking it for the students to highlight the abstract language, the frequent focus on ideas/nouns and their relationship to other ideas/nouns in the text.

I might also try to get more down and dirty with technical language - I often see skimming and scanning as learning goals in EAP books; perhaps unpacking as a reading skill might be of equal value?

Disclaimer: I may have completely misunderstood this article so please check comments below in the hope that some kind soul offers corrections if needed.

What do you recommend?

At various points throughout my teaching life, I've been asked by students for recommendations. As I'm a Dubliner working in Dublin, many of the things I am asked about relate to the practicalities of living in a relatively expensive city. For instance, if a student asks me where to go for a bit of food, I'll direct them towards Govindas (cheap, veggie lunches) or the student canteen in Trinity. If they're looking for nice coffee, I recommend Marks and Spencers on Grafton Street - it's not very hipster but it's got roof-space in the centre of the city with nice views and the coffee's grand. For a pint, I'd usually say The Library Bar just off George's Street and being a prematurely old fart, I'd tell them to avoid Temple Bar like the plague. And given the removal/privatisation of public facilities in our city, I always recommend the top floor of the largest department store on Grafton street for a far more serene ablution than the alternative of forking out for the privilege or sneaking into a fast food jacks.

I do occasionally get asked for recommendations of a more academic hue. Sometimes, these are very general - "How can I improve my English?"; sometimes, more specific - "Which is the best newspaper for phrasal verbs?". In each case, the student wants to do something more outside of the classroom to learn English and very kindly values my opinion on the matter. Although I'm more than happy to proffer unsolicited recommendations on TV shows, movies, music and podcasts, it is generally books that I find myself being asked to recommend.

Image taken from https://travelmilk.wordpress.com/2012/09/21/the-most-beautiful-book-shop-in-the-world/

I find this a bit tricky. For a start, many of the students who've asked me for a book recommendation tell me they don't have strong reading habits (that sounds a bit vague - what I mean is that they say they don't really read books for pleasure in their own language although I'm sure they do tons of online reading). Also, many of them are around the B2 level and I'm conscious that an overly challenging book might put them off reading in English. The more significant challenge is that during the academic year, I tend to read crime thrillers and very little else so I don't have a very wide range of books to choose from.

All that being said, here are some of the books that I have recommended and a short description as to why the recommendation was successful (I judge success by whether or not the student read it). In each case, the recommendation was made in the modest hope that the book would be enjoyable and lead to further book reading down the line.

The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time by Mark Haddon
I'll start with this one as I've recommended it the most and it's had the best response. The story is engaging, the narrator uses relatively simple language, the chapters are short and mix between narrative and interesting diversions, and it is heart-warming. I recommended it (and loaned a copy, in fact) to one student - she enthused about it and the book made its way around the class. So far, nobody who has started it has given up on it (to my knowledge).

The Boy in the Striped Pyjamas by John Boyne
This one was written by an Irish author so I'm guilty of a bit of nationalism there. I'm also guilty of never having actually read it. But a good few students have read it and multiple copies have moved around the class. Again, it is relatively simple, being told from a child's perspective but there is a bit of substance to it. And there's a film for follow up (or pre-reading).

Any Autobiography by Any Sportsperson
These tend to be good as the reader knows a lot about the person before they start reading which should make it a bit easier to read. Preferable to biographies which are often a bit denser and more demanding. I've seen the Pele book bouncing around a few times; Nadal and Pirlo both made appearances; Agassi's book is good for those of a certain age with an interest in tennis/overbearing parents.

The Old Man and the Sea by Ernest Hemingway
When brimming with the enthusiasm to read in English, I've seen a lot of students go for the classics. Far be it from me to discourage someone from reading James Joyce whilst living in Dublin, but I've seen a lot of students' attempts at reading in English dashed against the rocks of a €1 second hand copy of Dubliners. Hemingway's stripped down style of writing (particularly in this novel) makes it an easier read for those at the B2/C1 level, it's obviously a gorgeous story and a lot of people have already read it in their own language.

Panic by Jeff Abbot
About six years ago, I had a notion to try a book club with a class I had that were studying for the IELTS exam. The idea was that we'd all read the same book, at the same pace and there would be spin off speaking/writing activities in class. I'm not sure exactly how we landed on this book - I think it was because it was very dialogue heavy, fairly simple and had short chapters (it was also going cheap as well at the time). Anyway, the majority of students liked it, they all finished it (some read ahead) and several got the follow up - Fear (unfortunately, the author doesn't seem to have stuck to the negative noun formula and has started messing around with verbs!).

If asked, what books do you (would you) recommend to your students?

Reflections on not going to IATEFL

Taken from http://iatefl.britishcouncil.org/2016

If you remember the movie Forrest Gump,  you'll recall that Tom Hanks managed to gormlessly turn up at key moments in US history. Unlike Forrest, I have somehow contrived throughout my career to miss out on key moments in ELT's recent history (though I am frequently gormless at the standard moments that I manage to turn up for). For instance, despite going to a lot of ELT talks in Dublin at the start of my career, I managed not to go when Scott Thornbury rocked up with his Grammar McNuggets. I arrived in Trinity College to do my masters shortly after David Little of Learner Autonomy fame had moved on and I became outraged about learning styles ages after Russ Mayne's IATEFL talk.

Continuing the pattern, I missed out on IATEFL this year. Judging from the reaction on Twitter, it looks like I missed out on a good one. Silvana Richardson's talk seems to have been the standout (Marek has a good overview of the online reaction to the talk). But as well as that, I'm raging to have missed out on talks by colleagues or the chance to chat in real life to people whose height I can only guess at. Fortunately, IATEFL have a really good website where you can watch loads of the talks (and then claim it as CPD). If you squint at your monitor and spend the whole talk trying to think of a smart question, you could almost be there.

The first one I watched was Silvana's talk on discrimination against 'Non-Native' teachers and found it really moving. A lot has been said on it already but what really struck me was the description of how teachers react to this discrimination. Some pretend to be 'native' while others avoid any mention of their background. I've expressed my outrage about this topic before but watching this talk alongside a 'non-native' teacher who is far more qualified than I am (and who has endured this kind of thing), I just felt really, really sad. A good chunk of people in our industry are either treated like shit or made to feel shit. We can do better.

Last year, in one of my writing classes, we were working on a group writing project. As it was a formative assignment, the topic for the writing project was fairly arbitrary (the year before, we did something on social media in education). I decided to take this native/non-native issue and set that as the topic. I thought it would be interesting for the students and also interesting to hear their perspective. The aim of the project was to write a short essay about which type of teacher was better suited to teaching English. I took a fairly hands off approach and simply guided them in terms of coherence and developing ideas. As it was a group writing project, I got to listen to them discussing their ideas as well as reading their final essay. I expected that from the start, they'd say 'natives' were preferable but that as they read a bit more, they might adapt their position. In fact, from the start, they disagreed with the idea that a 'native' teacher was always best and continued to do so until the end. Their views were far more nuanced than I had expected.

Not a very scientific bit of research, I'll admit, but it does make me question the notion that students are as in thrall to the 'native' tag as parts of our industry are (an interesting game to play - go to the 'About' sections on the homepages of these language schools in Dublin and see how far you get before depression at how many trumpet the nativeness of their teachers sets in - I managed 4 before I gave up).

I feel a bit bad about that last bit - it's a bit sarcastic and sneery. But I've decided to leave it in because I think that here in Dublin (and elsewhere) we do need to question the casual acceptance that 'native' is best. It exists. Before I got into blogging and tweeting and reading up on this a bit, I would have been just as guilty of trumpeting my 'nativeness'. That is why a talk like this is good. But I worry that here in Dublin, I'm not the only one missing out.