Podcast appearances and mentions of tracy what

It's Friday, my friends! I can't even BEGIN to tell you all the interesting topics

Today I'm answering 4 AMAZING questions straight from YOU in the community!   1. MARTHA: How do you naturally check for ovulation? What are the physical signs?   *Bleeding is not a sign of ovulation because your follicles (small sac of fluid) still make estrogen as they grow and try to ovulate and eventually that uterine lining will have to shed. OVULATION is when one of your follicles will grow big enough, is stimulated by LH & finally ruptures & releases an egg. SIGNS OF OVULATION: Egg white consistency, stretchy, stays wet & happens BEFORE OVULATION but can occur anytime estrogen levels are high Basal Body Temperature (waking temp) will SPIKE after ovulation (progesterone raises your temp) & stays high until you get your period about 10-14 days later. Before ovulation your average temperature is about 97-97.7 and will increase about .5 degrees after ovulation. Mid luteal blood test to show higher levels of progesterone 2. SAM: What do you mean when you say cycle phases? We have 4 CYCLE PHASES: 1. FOLLICULAR hormones are low but estrogen, testosterone and FSH (A pituitary hormone that stimulates ovarian follicles to grow)are slowly increasing & stimulating your follicles to make estrogen 2. OVULATION the rise in FSH stimulates the hormones to release an egg Estrogen continues to rise to thicken the lining 3. LUTEAL Progesterone rises. Progesterone counterbalances estrogen- yin to yang. Progesterone thins uterine lining & estrogen thickens it. BENEFITS: reduces inflammation, builds muscle, promotes sleep, protects against heart disease, calms nervous system, supports metabolism, thyroid, skin & hair health. 4. MENSTRUATION hormones decline quickly to their lowest levels  1st half of cycle (follicular &  ovulation) you have more energy than 2nd half (Luteal and menstruation) 3. CASSIE: Are slow exercises beneficial or do you need to do intense workouts to make an impact? If you’re in the early stages of managing your PCOS or healing your hormonal imbalances, it’s important to keep your workouts to no more than 30 minutes. The time limitation will prevent excess cortisol production and adrenal fatigue. When you get your heart pumping your body burns glucose in your bloodstream for energy. The supply only lasts about 30 minutes. After that your body turns to your adrenal glands which start pumping out the stress hormone cortisol which converts stored fat into usable glucose so you have the energy to continue working out. If you have unresolved hormonal issues like excess estrogen, the estrogen overload programs your body to convert any circulating glucose back into fat. So instead of burning fat you start storing it. This is more likely to happen in the luteal phase when your body naturally pumps out more cortisol. Long, intense exercises pump SUGAR into the bloodstream to BURN for energy. BUT when you have INSULIN RESISTANCE (when cells in your muscles, fat, & liver don't respond well to insulin & CAN’T use glucose from your blood for ENERGY) the influx of sugar in the blood AND the INCREASE of CORTISOL (a stress hormone) released from a high intensity workout gets stored as FAT instead of burned off as ENERGY!! The result? FATIGUE, FAT STORAGE and WEIGHT GAIN. 4. TRACY: What qualifies as an irregular period? A regular period can range anywhere from 21-35 days. Consistent timing each month (within the 21-35 day range) is what signifies a regular period. Menstrual fluid should be mostly liquid without clots. Day 1 is first day of heavy flow. Follicular phase is anywhere from 7-21 days Luteal phase is between 10-16 days SOURCES: In the FLO by Alisa Vitti Period Repair Manual by Lara Briden Free resources & where can we connect more?! Join my FREE TEXT COMMUNITY to get weekly HORMONE HEALTH & MINDSET TIPS texted right to your phone! Text the word "CORINNE" to (855) 691-0508 Come hang out with me on Instagram: @corinneangelica  Do you know what imbalances you have? Take this free HORMONE IMBALANCE QUIZ to find out! Click here for information & VIP access to my upcoming group coaching program/course! Interested in setting up a complimentary call with me to chat about your health goals & the services I offer? Head to my calendar to book in a call! So happy to be here with you! XO Corinne

The Who What How When and Why of Error Correction - TranscriptionTracy Yu: Welcome to the "TEFL Training Institute Podcast." The bite‑size TEFL podcast for teachers, trainers and managers.Ross Thorburn: Hi, everyone.Tracy: Hi, welcome to our podcast.Ross: A lot of the time when we're hanging out and we speak Chinese to each other, I often ask you to correct my Chinese if I make any mistakes. When you do, it's really annoying.[laughter]Tracy: Why is that?Ross: I don't know. It's like there's something about being corrected. You always feel that you're making a comment about how bad my Chinese is and it really annoys me. I don't know, it's funny. I always say, "Can you please correct me more?" but when you do, it's really annoying.Tracy: Do you think that helps you?Ross: Yes, but it's bad for your motivation because you feel annoyed by it.Tracy: What's the point? [laughs]Ross: The point is that today our podcast is about error correction and helping students and trainees and stuff learn from their mistakes.Tracy: As usual, we got three main questions or areas that we're going to discuss.Ross: First one is, why do students make errors?Tracy: The second one, should we correct errors?Ross: Finally, what principles are there in correcting students' errors?Why do students make errors?Ross: Why do students make errors?Tracy: One reason is, is an evidence of learning and is a part of the learning process. We learn how to drive and we learn how to...Ross: Swim. [laughs]Tracy: ...cook, how to swim and new skills. We usually make some mistakes and then from the mistakes, we can learn how to do it better.Ross: Yeah, no one does anything perfectly the first time.Tracy: The first time, yeah.Ross: That's impossible. Something I found really interesting about developmental errors is this thing called...we're not going to go too much into the weeds here with Second Language Acquisition, but I just wanted to mention this because I thought it was so cool.This is an example of U‑shaped acquisition from Rod Ellis' book, "Second Language Acquisition." Instead of me reading them out, Tracy, can you just make a sentence with each of them and I'll do a commentary?Tracy: Sure.Ross: This is for students acquiring ate, as in the past tense of eat.Tracy: I eat pizza last night.Ross: This is when you've not been able to mark the past tense, that's all, which is the first stage, and then...?Tracy: I ate pizza last night.Ross: Really interesting, right? The first type of past tense verbs that students acquire are irregular ones, which Tracy just learned. Next?Tracy: I eated pizza last night.Ross: This is after you've started to learn the past tense rule of adding ‑ed onto the end of things, but you've overused it. You've overgeneralized it.Tracy: I ated pizza last night.Ross: Here you've made some hybrid between the two, and the final one?Tracy: I ate pizza last night.Ross: Great.Tracy: Which is correct.Ross: Which is, yeah, you've now acquired it. Congratulations.Tracy: [laughs] Thank you, but the second and the fifth stage, I used the words correctly, but it doesn't mean I was at the same stage of acquiring the language.Ross: Yeah, which is so interesting. This is such a great example, because it shows how making errors is evidence that you're developing.Anyway, that was the developmental kind. What's the other main reason that students make errors?Tracy: Maybe they directly translate from their first language to the language they study?Ross: It's not always a direct translation, but yeah, call it L1 transfer.Tracy: Transfer, yeah.Ross: A long time ago, people thought that all the errors came from that. Gradually, they came to realize that that's not the case and a lot of the errors that students make are the same regardless of their first language. Part of the transfer errors, they're actually harder to get rid of than the developmental errors.Should teachers correct students’ errors in ESL classes?Ross: Let's talk about the next one. Should we correct errors? What do you tell teachers on teacher training courses?Tracy: I think it really depends. Sometime, I tell them to ignore that.Ross: Wow, OK. When do you say to ignore errors?Tracy: Two main scenarios. Number one, if it's not really in a learning setting. For example, you haven't seen the students for a while and saw the students, have a chat, and then students really talkative and very motivated and probably make some mistakes and then have errors in their sentences. Really, to be honest, I don't think that's a great context for us to correct their errors.Their motivation was not to learn much, they want to communicate with you. It's probably going to demotivate the students. The second scenario is if the error is really not impeding the communication that much, you probably want to ignore it.Ross: Yeah, right. Actually, I'm going to play you a little Jeremy Harmer quote about what you were talking about there, this process of deciding if you should correct an error or not.[pre‑recorded audio starts]Jeremy Harmer: Every time a student makes a mistake in class, you have to make a judgment. That's actually not true, you have to make about four or five judgments. The first judgment you have to make is, "Was it wrong?" The second judgment is, "Actually, what was wrong?" because sometimes it's not that easy to work out what was wrong.The third judgment you have to make is, "Should I correct it or should I just let it go?" The fourth judgment you have to make is, "Should I correct it or should somebody else correct it?" Suddenly in that one moment when students just make a mistake, you have to work out what to do.[pre‑recorded audio ends]Tracy: There are four main things that we need to consider immediately when the student make mistake. They are who, when, what, and how.Ross: What was the error? Yeah, because this is sometimes difficult to tell. Is it a pronunciation mistake or is it lexical or is it grammatical or...?Tracy: Who's going to correct it?Ross: It could be the teacher. You could try and do peer correction, you could try and get the person to correct themselves, I suppose.Tracy: Yeah, or even small groups some times. When? Should you correct the error immediately, or you're waiting? We always say delayed.Ross: The last one was?Tracy: How. What kind of techniques you are going to use?Ross: Good, hang on to that thought, because we'll talk about that in the next segment. I actually wanted to play another quote. This one's from Stephen Krashen. This is what Stephen Krashen thinks about error correction.[pre‑recorded audio starts]Stephen Krashen: Output plus correction. You say something, you make a mistake, someone corrects it. You change your idea of what the rule is. The six‑year‑old ESL child comes into the class and says to the teacher, "I comes to school every day."Teacher says, "No, no, I come to school every day." The child is supposed to think, "Oh yeah, that s doesn't go on the first person singular, it goes on the third person singular."I think that's utter fantasy, but that's the idea.[pre‑recorded audio ends]Ross: It's quite interesting. He thinks error correction is a complete waste of time. Dave Willis, the task‑based learning guru, pardon, he's someone else, just thinks error correction doesn't work.Tracy: Oh really?Ross: Not everyone says that but I just wanted to give an example of both.Tracy: That's quite confusing though. Should we correct or...?Ross: There's other research that says that you should and it does make a difference in some situations, but not in other ones. I think there's the research, not quite conclusive.Tracy: Definite law students haven't read about this research.[laughter]Tracy: They have really high demand in classroom from teachers to correct their errors, because otherwise, you don't think they learn anything.Ross: For me, that's true. That at least some of the value in coming to a language class is you get your errors corrected, because input, you can buy a book or you can watch TV. There's lots of ways you could get input, maybe not always great for practice. A lot of people in a lot countries do have opportunities to practice English.Here in Beijing, you could just go to a Starbucks and try and find a foreigner or some people might have to speak English for work. The big advantage of going to a language class is that you get correction.Tracy: This makes me think of the students actually, in my class which I just taught this afternoon. Is about some phonological aspects and she told me at the end of the class, she said, "Oh no, I've finally realized I have no knowledge, no idea and no awareness of the features of connected speech, because I study English for so long, but I always have trouble to understand people in the listening."If I didn't have that correction in my lesson, I think she'd probably not be able to aware of the features for a long time.Ross: Yeah, absolutely. Good, you should send that to Stephen Krashen.How should teachers correct students’ ESL errors?Ross: Let's talk about some principles for error correction. We'll just pretend that we've ignored Stephen Krashen, we've decided that when students actually made an error. What do you think are some good ideas or best practices or advice on correcting errors?Tracy: I will say, the first one is, don't correct all the errors.Ross: Yeah, it'd be way too many, right?Tracy: Yeah.Ross: That'd be really annoying.Tracy: [laughs] Yeah. They won't have much time to really practice.Ross: I think as well, we know from Second Language Acquisition that not all of the errors that you correct are actually going to help the students.Tracy: Just try to prioritize errors. Of course, again, the fundamental stuff. Was your lesson aims are and then what kind of language or skills that you are trying to focus on in your class. Stick to those. That should be prioritized.Ross: Another thing to add is correct errors that effect more students instead of fewer students. I agree, if it's in your plan, then correct it, but I also think if it's a problem all the students are having or most of the students are having, then it's probably worth correcting.That's a bit about what to correct, how about some how to correct? Actually, can I play you another quote? I want to make a record for the number of quotes, someone talked, it's number three.Tracy: OK, go on.Ross: This is Herbert Puchta, I think his name is, talking about an error correction technique.Herbert Puchta: Imagine a class where lots of students have problems getting the famous third person "S" right. Take a piece of paper and write an "S" on it. Stick it somewhere on the wall. When a student makes that mistake, point to the paper, wait and smile. Most probably, the student who's just made the error will notice what you want them to do and correct themselves.Ross: I thought that was interesting, he also chose the third persons "S" as his example. I think what he's trying to say there is that's a really in‑obtrusive way of correcting a student. You can correct someone as their speaking, by pointing at something, but you don't have to interrupt them.Another one for how, this may be also related to who, is to try and get the students involved in their correction.Tracy: Yeah, I get it, but sorry, I just feel like sometimes...We talk about who and we always want to encourage students themselves to correct themselves. The techniques in how teacher try to raise their awareness of their error is repeating the error.Ross: It's interesting that you bring that up because...or the other one is called a recast when the students said something wrong and you repeat it back to them, but they say it right. There's research that shows that when you do that, a lot of students don't realize that you are correcting an error. They just think you're repeating something.Tracy: Exactly.Ross: What are some ways of raising students' awareness that they've made an error?Tracy: What I experimented today was WeChat. Of course, I think there is...Ross: For those of you know in China, WeChat's an instant messenger type thing.Tracy: I ask the students to join the group.Ross: A group chat.Tracy: Yeah, group chat. Yeah, before the lesson started. Almost at the end of the class, I listen to what they said, I posted on four or five sentences into the group chat so everybody can see it.Ross: What's in these sentences? Mistakes the students have made?Tracy: Mistakes and also correct sentences together. Of course, I changed some of the words they are using or the pronouns or places. Yeah, I just, talk to your partners and then tell each other which one you think correct and which one is not correct and the then you think the one is not correct and then you can type the correct ones and then send to the group.Ross: I think you also hit on another thing there, that's something to get students involved, but another thing is that, the anonymity. Not singling someone out.Tracy: Another thing, I always tell teachers. There should be a correction circle. You raise their awareness, usually we stop and they move on, but not, there should be another step to complete the circle which is, give students another chance to use the language correctly by themselves. For example, the pizza mistakes.Ross: I ated pizza yesterday.Tracy: I mmm pizza yesterday.Ross: I ate pizza yesterday.Tracy: What did you have for breakfast today?Ross: I ate cereal for breakfast today.Tracy: Really? Do you really? [laughs]Ross: No, I actually drank coffee today, but...[laughter]Ross: ...this is a different verb. I didn't think it would fit your point.Tracy: You know what I mean, just...Ross: Yeah, give the students a chance.Tracy: It's something can be really simple. Just ask a similar question and they can answer.Errors Wrap upTracy: We talk a lot about correcting errors, but the examples we were using really focus on the language itself, but don't forget about error correction also related to performance or behavior in class.Ross: What does that mean?Tracy: For example, teaching young learners and if the student wasn't well behaved, I think we also need to...Ross: Give feedback.Tracy: ...give feedback on that.Ross: Yeah, good point. Bye everyone, thanks for listening.Tracy: Bye.

This week we welcome Tracy Chong from Strata Insights to Anatomy of a Strategy. Tara had the chance to see Tracy and her partner Mark Radha present the concept of Brand Economics at The Gathering in Banff recently, and it completely blew her mind. Tara’s making it her mission to get Tracy in front of as many people as possible, so we had to have her on the show. Here's a glimpse of what we (Tara) discussed with Tracy: What is Brand Economics? Brand does not equal marketing. Brand valuation is great; however, there is no actionability out of it and all the factors that influence it. Why does Brand have no KPI’s? How do we define a brand and what affects our perception of a brand’s value A big thank you to Tracy for coming to the studio with us! You can connect with Tracy Chong on Linkedin You learn about Strata Insights on their website at https://stratainsights.com Thanks for listening, you can follow Truly Inc  Tara Hunt on YouTube: https://youtube.com/tarahunt  Truly Inc on Twitter: https://twitter.com/trulyinc   Visit our website: https://trulyinc.com  You can also follow us on Twitter: Tara Hunt: https://twitter.com/missrogue   Carlos Pacheco: https://twitter.com/carlospache_co  Anatomy of a Strategy podcast is recorded in Toronto, Canada in the offices of Truly Inc. Produced by Carlos Pacheco and Tara Hunt. Podcast editing by Joe Pacheco

We interview ELT author and teacher trainer Edmund Dudley about why teaching teens can be so enjoyable, how to avoid sabotaging your classes and how to inspire your students with the right activities.Tracy Yu: Hello, everyone.Ross Thorburn: Welcome to the podcast.Tracy: Today, we actually talked about something we haven't explored much, which is teaching teenagers.Ross: Right. A lot on the podcast, we talk about teaching adults and we talk about teaching young learners, but teens is a group that we've not really spoken about much.Tracy: Have you ever taught teens before, Ross?Ross: I have, yeah. I must admit they were not my favorite group to teach.Tracy: When I first started my teaching job, I was teaching teenagers like 14, 15 years old.Ross: Today's guest who's going to tell us all about this is Ed Dudley. Ed is from the UK. He's worked in Hungary for a very long time. He specializes in teaching teenagers. He's got a book out called " ETpedia Teenagers." Ed is also a freelance teacher trainer with Oxford University Press.As usual, we have three areas that we talked to Ed about. First of all, we generally go into what it's like to teach teenagers, and then we ask him about general tips related to teaching teens. Near the end, we ask him to share some of his great activities from his book that are specifically geared to teaching teenagers.What is it like to Teach Teenagers?Ross: Hi, Ed. Thanks a lot for coming on the podcast.Ed Dudley: It's my great pleasure.Ross: Do you want to start off just by telling us a little bit about what it's like to teach teens and how you got into that age group?Ed: I have to say that when I first began teaching, I avoided teens for the first 10 years or so of my teaching career. I think that was partly because I was very young myself, and so I felt a little bit intimidated by teenage students.It was also because I needed that difficult baptism of working in the primary classroom, which I still think is the hardest arena to teach in as a teacher. Once I got some experience under my belt, I then felt much more confident about working with teenagers.As soon as I began teaching teens regularly in a high school setting, I actually felt straightaway that it was the age group that I had most success with, both in terms of what my students were producing and in terms of how I was feeling about the interaction between this and the lessons that we were having together.Tracy: What kind of strategies or tips that we could use from teaching adults or young learners to teaching teens?Ed: I think looking back on that period of your own life is always a really useful way to start when you're working with teenagers. I remember it being quite a volatile time. I remember it being a time of great insecurity and also being obsessed with the idea of what people are saying about me and what judgments people are making about me.Very often, it's quite common for teens to be having a difficult time of things with their parents, also with their teachers. I think it is quite interesting that they're growing up very fast, and yet some parts of them are maturing and growing more quickly and more successfully than others.You have this weird combination of young people who are amazingly mature and impressive in some ways and yet incredible childlike still in other ways. That's I think unique to the teenage classroom.Top tips for teaching teensTracy: How do you build rapport with the teenagers, and then how do you win them over? Because when I was a teacher, it was really difficult from the beginning to make sure they trust you.Ed: My own approach is to bear in mind what I don't want to do. I think it's far easier to make mistakes than it is to actually build rapport in a proactive way. I often feel that it can take months, perhaps even years, to build rapport with a group of students or with a particular student.On the other hands, it's possible to ruin rapport in a matter of minutes. I think if we can avoid, for example, finding a reason to laugh at their expense, teenagers are very often quite awkward in the things they do and the things they say.The teachers that I had very often used to prey on that and would score a cheap laugh at the group's expense by laughing at one student, trying to get a laugh is exactly the way to make that one student hate you.Also to plant the seed of doubt in the minds of everybody else in the class, thinking, "What's this teacher going to say about me? What's going to happen if I do something which is awkward?" That leads straight away to the students keeping their mouths closed when they're asked questions.I think another thing that we can do is that's a mistake when working with teenagers is to be impatient with the fact that they don't want to talk. It's taken me a while to realize that a lot of our teaching in the classroom is based on promoting fluency and promoting communication. That often leads to us putting pressure on students to speak.It's ironic in a sense that teenagers, especially teenage boys, are very often at a stage in their lives when they don't want to say anything to adults at all. Being aware of this and being accepting of that is also something that I think is an important thing to do.It can also be tricky when setting up classroom tasks. If I think about, for example, pair work, in a sense when you're working with very young learners, you can be much more of an autocrat in the way you set up tasks. "OK, you two, I want you to work together. You stand up. Come here. Work with this person."That's not going to work with teenagers. There are all kinds of reasons why certain individual students are reluctant to work with other students in the class. I think those things have to be respected equally.We tend, or I tend, to overlook how very, very busy and complicated teenagers' lives are. You see this every time students come into the lesson, that they're usually distracted. There might be a couple of moments late. They're very often looking at their phones.It's easy for a teacher to think, "Well, here she is again late for class." When actually what's happening in her life right then, what was that message she just got on her phone ‑‑ it's very easy for us to assume that students have nothing better to do than concentrate on our class.In fact, I've realized that in a large number of cases with teenagers, our lesson is the least important thing going on in their lives at that particular moment. Not realizing that, instructing them to put their phones away and, "Come on, let's get down to business," this kind of approach can actually be hugely counterproductive.Ross: You mentioned using phones. What do you think about using phones with the groups of teens?Ed: To me, a lot of this context is dependent. I wouldn't like to make general points about how phones should or shouldn't be used. The problem I have personally with that is that once a phone comes out, it's quite hard to get it put away again.My own tendency or my own default is to use them towards the end of the class rather than at the start of the class, and also to do tasks which make use of offline functionality.I know from talking to Shaun Wilden who's written a book on "Mobile Learning" that there's an awful lot that we can do with the basic functionality of a mobile phone. For example, getting feedback on lessons very often using an emoji approach or using something, using Instant Messaging, can be really effective. Shaun has got all kinds of good ideas for doing that.Ross: What are some of your favorite things? I think we spoke a lot about the challenges. What do you think are some of the best things about working with that age group?Ed: The thing I love especially about younger teens is that energy and that vitality, particularly when it comes to certain topic areas or things that students are particularly interested in, and then you'll find that certain teenagers have an encyclopedic knowledge of things that you know very, very little about. You have also that kind of wonderful sense of humor as well.One of the things that I loved about working in a high school was that I got to go and spend my working day in a room with kids who are on the verge of laughter most of the time. For especially young, for 13 and 14‑year‑old boys in mixed classes can be really tough because of that kind of boisterous slack behavior.When it's channeled in a positive way and when they're really on point of making funny observations in English and are able to bring a smile to your face as well, there's something really joyful about that, that you do get sometimes with other age groups. Not as consistently as you get it with a group of good teenage student, with whom you've established a very good rapport.Great activities for teaching teensTracy: Ed, would you like to share some activities that you use with teenagers in a classroom?Ed: One activity that I love doing with teenagers is a speaking activity. Really, it's a technique for motivating students to repeat themselves or to try and polish a piece of spoken language. The reason I like this is that very often teenagers don't want to polish their work. They don't want to try it again.The way it works is they have a topic they have to talk about and maybe they've had some time to prepare something. I used to get students to talk about a photograph of some graffiti and talk about why they'd chosen it. Anyway, the students film each other. When they finish their short piece of language, what happens is they review it.Very often, the student says like, "No, that's terrible. I sound really bad. Delete that. I want to do it again." It's that power of control that students have over that work which motivates them to make it better.Unlike teachers who still don't like seeing themselves on video or hearing recordings of their voices, teenagers are absolutely fine with this. This technique of getting them to film themselves actually motivates them to do a much better job than they would have normally done.The other one that I like is a random slide show, like a random PowerPoint task. The way this works is you prepare a few slides at home and you give the students a topic. You tell them what the topic is, for example, 21st century life or something like that. They have a few minutes to prepare a short presentation of what they're going to say.The thing is they're going to have some slides as well to go with that presentation. The first time they get to see the slides, their slides, is when they're standing up to give their presentation. Each time they click on Next Slide, what they see on the screen is completely unexpected.Now, this is the challenge that can be just hilarious. The images that you have, you might just, for example, have a picture of a forest, then they have to figure out quickly on their feet what a forest has to do with 21st century life.It might be a cup of coffee and they have to talk about that, or it might be something really absurd like a picture of a rabbit with the title politics is complicated. They have to think on their feet and figure out a way that this is relevant to that topic of 21st century life. You often get a lot of laughter and then a lot of hugely imaginative and memorable answers from students.That's the random PowerPoint idea, that is one that I've had a lot of success with high‑flying students. That idea grew out of the compulsory phrase activity where you have a student who is really not interested in doing the compulsory written task that you have to do like a letter to a hotel or something.You make that task more open ended and challenge students who are willing to be challenged to include a preposterous phrase in the letter which you have given them beforehand, which has nothing to do with the topic of the letter, like, "The warm glass of Sri Lankan mango juice," or whatever it was.That's something which allows you to have task which work at two levels, the standard exam practice tasks for those who wish them to be back. They have this added value of the challenge to those who want a bit more to keep them entertained and engaged.Ross: Ed, thanks so much for coming on and being so generous with your time. Can you tell our listeners, if they want to find more about you or they want to read about your writings related to teaching to teens, where's the best place for them to go?Ed: The thing I'm most proud of at the moment is the book that I've written about teaching teenagers. That's called ETpedia Teenagers. You can find out about that at myetpedia.com. I sometimes post ideas about teaching teenagers as well. There's also a link I can give you for that. www.legyened.edublogs.orgRoss: Great. Thanks again.Ed: Thanks so much for having me.Tracy: Bye. Thanks for listening

How honest are we with our students? How honest are schools with their teachers? And how can we be more honest with ourselves? We discuss with ESL recruitment guru, Jessica Keller.Tracy: Hello, everyone. Today we've got our special podcast and then who has been on our podcast before is...Jessica Keller: Jessica Keller.[laughter]Tracy: Welcome.Jessica: That's me.[laughter]Tracy: Welcome, Jessica.Ross Thorburn: Jessica, thanks for coming on again. Do you want to introduce yourself very briefly for people that missed you last time?Jessica: Yeah, I've been recruiting for English language teachers and actually now other different subject teachers for both Asia and in the US for the last 13 years.Ross: Before that, you were an English teacher, a manager and the regional manager, those kind of things in Japan, right?Jessica: Yes, I did start as a teacher in Japan.Ross: Something happened at work to me fairly recently that I wanted to mention to you guys. We were talking about kids taking English lessons for about two hours a week and this person said to me that our school's competitors all tell parents, "If your kid studies with us, they'll sound like a native speaker after about two years."Jessica: Wow.Ross: I thought that's just a lie, right?Jessica: [laughs]Ross: Like a blatant lie. He said, "Well, we have to do that because that's what our competitors do. We don't really have a choice." I thought, "Well, surely that's going to lead to so many other problems."Anyway, it reminded me of this quote that I heard from Sam Harris who if you've not listened to him before, you should check out his "Waking Up" podcast.Sam Harris: It's amazing to me that we have to get back to a place where being out of harmony with what is demonstrably true pays a penalty.The value we have to all embrace is we have to care to be in register to the truth. Especially, people who are in power, whose decisions affect the lives of millions, we have to care when they are in register or out of register with what's true.Ross: Yes, therefore, we can talk a bit about lying and how lying comes into language teaching, recruitment, Jessica, which you're an expert in, teaching, training, management and all those things.Tracy: What the main areas today we're going to talk about? Lying?Ross: I think we can talk about when we lie and then how we can maybe lie less or at least be more honest.Jessica: Especially in sales. The nature of sales and recruitment for that matter is also just, of course, trying to get people to buy into something. Having a situation where you're trying to sell the benefits of something as opposed to being you listing all the negatives and all the positives.We don't necessarily think of that as lying all the time, but if you're openly leaving information out, then it can be really deceptive.Ross: Let's first of all talk about lying to students and then maybe how we can lie less. Then secondly...Tracy: ...we're going to talk about lying to our teachers and how honest we are in teacher training and management. Then last...Jessica: ...also about lying to ourselves.Lying To StudentsRoss: Let's talk about lying to students. When you, Tracy, taught adults before, what did you feel maybe that people weren't honest about or teachers were not honest about the students?Tracy: I think when the teacher is trying to give students some feedback, especially with adult learners. They have to make sure how much corrective feedback you are giving them because they don't want to lose face in front of other classmates.Even though they made mistakes they have to make sure, "Oh, yeah, really good. Well done," but actually, they didn't do a very good job.Ross: I guess it depends. If you praise someone maybe for trying something, that's honest but I have seen teachers say, "Oh, how else could you say X?" The student says something that's completely wrong and goon. Then the teacher says, "Yeah, well done. That's great." You can still say, "Oh, thanks for trying," or "That's interesting but not quite. But I think..."[laughter]Jessica: "Oh, good try. But here's what it actually is," or something like that.Ross: You're not giving them a lot of help by telling them they're right when they are actually wrong. [laughs]Jessica: Yeah. Also, I think to the original point you had about sales if you're setting an expectation to the parents of the kids who are going to sound like native speakers, and the kids have that pressure, obviously, they're going to be manufacturing and trying to live up to some expectation.That's not really realistic. It almost encourages a lie in some ways and the teachers also for maybe passing them along.Ross: I think that maybe we do have a bit of a lie in general that's like language learning is...We make language learning out to be a little easier than it actually is. I think in schools often will paint a picture for students that's a lot more optimistic than actually should.Tracy: That's a really good point, actually. If we just look at the people who can speak fluent foreign language, they definitely put a lot of efforts and it's not just one year. For example, I studied English for 29 years maybe.Ross: [laughs]Tracy: 29 years. I still made mistakes.Jessica: I have a friend who's sending her daughter overseas for four weeks. The daughter is taking one year of high school language study. My friend is convinced her daughter is going to be fluent and I'm like, "Aargh."Ross: After a year?Jessica: After one year of high school study and four weeks overseas.Ross: Wow.Jessica: She's like, "Well, it'll be really intensive." I'm like, "Yeah, I don't know about that."[laughter]Jessica: "Maybe you're right." I'd love to be wrong on that but it's that people have again these expectations that it's going to be easy to do.Ross: That's so interesting. I wonder where that comes from.Jessica: I think sales is partly the blame, for sure.Tracy: Yeah.Ross: [laughs] Yeah, absolutely. I also wanted to mention here something about how honest are we to students about what people actually say.Jake Whiddon, who's been on the podcast a couple times, he was telling me about he hang out with his daughter for the whole summer. He said, "I watch my daughter play with dozens of different kids and never once did I hear her say, 'Hello,' or 'How are you?' in either English or Chinese."I thought, "That's so interesting." The first thing that we teach...you know how that works. The important thing you can learn in English is, "Hello, how are you? I'm fine, thank you and you?" The majority of people that we teach those phrases to are kids, but actually kids don't say that.Tracy: I partially agree with that. I always hear foreigners talking to Chinese kids if the kids can speak English. They always say, "Hi! What's your name? How are you?"Ross: That argument is self‑justifying. The only reason they ask them those questions is because they know that's what they've been taught in school. I see your point, but I think with that those are interactions between adults and kids. For kids, the majority of interactions they will have will be with other kids.I think what someone really needs to do somewhere, is make up a corpus for children, and find out what the kids say to each other, what language the kids actually use. Then we could start teaching children some language that's going to be genuinely useful to them right now as opposed to learning a bunch of stuff that, when they grow up, they'll be able to use in 15 years' time.Tracy: Fair enough.Lying To TeachersRoss: Let's talk about lying to teachers. One of the reasons that I was very motivated to leave a previous job was, I found out that the Marketing Department, that marketed to teachers online, have much higher salary on their online advertisements than their first‑grade teachers actually get.That struck me as being so dishonest. I was much more serious about finding a job somewhere else. What do you think is the argument as a business, or as a school, why you wouldn't do that?Jessica: Why you wouldn't lie about the salary?Ross: Yeah.Jessica: I feel like that's something you can pretty easily punch a hole through. You don't want to be a dishonest company. As much as you want to get people on board and you want people to be interested in your job more than any other job, if you're known in the industry for being dishonest, then that's going to come through pretty quickly.If you advertise a salary of a certain amount, and then you get a job offer that's significantly lower than that, you're going to feel pretty disappointed, right?Ross: Yeah. Absolutely. How honest do you think schools should be when they're hiring teachers? Like you're saying, you do want to sell the benefits obviously more that the disadvantages. Equally you have to talk about some disadvantages in order to be transparent and give people an accurate picture of what life's going to be like.Jessica: For example, I've had jobs in the past that I've recruited for that have split days off or split shifts in the salary. I haven't put that in the job advertisement, but I'll talk to them about it.Ross: I think the advertisement is an advertisement with the route, but the interview is when you can get into those parts of it.Jessica: Well, admittedly, I know people will be less drawn to an ad if they see it. It's easier just to have a conversation. It's less concrete.Ross: One other thing that I wanted to mention here, related to lying to teachers and being honest to teachers, is I used to work with someone who thought that best way to give feedback to a teacher, who had a complaint, was to tell them, "Oh, hey, Jessica. I observed your class. I thought it was absolutely perfect.""There was nothing wrong with it all. Well done. You're such a great employee. By the way, you might want to read about error correction. That might be something you'd be interested in learning about."This person thought that would be the best way of getting those people that, for example, have a problem with error correction or got a complaint about not correcting enough errors. That would be the best way to get them to improve. Do you not think you're denying that person some avenue for development? That's important information that that person has a right to know.Jessica: Yeah. I am certainly glad that when I was a teacher, it was a while ago, I received feedback on complaints. Lying about something they've received is also deceptive and condescending, like, "We can't tell you this information, because we're afraid you might crack." Right?Ross: Right. How weak do we assume that people are? That they can't handle even direct criticism, just passing on of something negative.Jessica: It also could be that managers fear of conflict. I guess it could be their own thing.Lying To OurselvesRoss: Last one. Lying to ourselves. Something I've wondered with teacher training that we could do to be more honest about it is follow up with people a long time after the training. I think that we often in teacher training courses measure the success by how well the teachers meet our own standards on the course.Whereas I think, what we need to do more on that is call people up six months later, or a year later, and go like, "How did this help you find a job, or improve in your job, or get promoted?"Jessica: Or, "Did it help you?" [laughs]Tracy: Yeah.Ross: Or, "Did it help you at all?" Because, maybe it didn't.Jessica: It's the same with interviews and recruiting. We think we have a really good idea of this person. I do think generally we do, but we have to remember it's not exact science. I remember hiring someone that I was...No, I didn't even hire him.Ross: [laughs]Jessica: I took him over from another recruiter. I helped him with the last stages of his arrival. I was like, "This guy's going to be a complete failure." He completed his contract, and he was eligible for rehire, which blew me away, because he was not someone who I would've wanted to work with. There's people, who I've thought would be great, and they didn't even last probation.Ross: That's something I think that you do that's really great in recruiting. You find out the results afterwards. It's not just like, "We hired this guy. I thought he would be OK," and that's the end of it. You have this great system where you hire people, and then you can find out if they lasted six months, or a year, or if they got promoted, or what happened.It's not just that it's an amazing tool, but I think yours is a really amazing job of getting that feedback and plugging that information back into the system to help you make even better decisions in the future. For a while, when someone got fired, that you hired, did you not go back to your interview notes? Or get your staff to go back to your interview notes and go like, "What did you miss?"Jessica: Yeah. We still do that. We look at anybody who fails probation. We look at what happened. We definitely analyze. It's a post‑mortem, I guess, of everyone.Ross: Imagine if we did that with training as well. We did a post‑mortem like a year later.Jessica: It's not like, "If this teacher fails, it's a fault of the training."Ross: I was more getting at the idea that what the course teaches as good teaching is different from the reality of what schools expect. I think that there is a value in training course like teaching excellence or something as we see it.Also, there's got to be part of this. We're preparing you to go and get a job, and be successful. If we're missing out some skills that actually are going to help you succeed in a sort of a semi‑corporate school environment, or whatever environment you're going into, then maybe we're missing out on something there.Jessica: True.Ross: Cool, all right. Jessica, thanks again very much, for coming on.Jessica: Thanks for having me. It's great to be back. Can't wait for my next trip up here.Ross: Yay. [laughs]Tracy: Oh, great. Bye.Ross: Bye.Jessica: Bye.

Find out how to help students apply their learning, how teachers can apply what they learning on teacher training courses and what trainers and teacher educators can do to encourage teachers to apply more of what they learn in professional developmentRoss Thorburn: All right. Hi, everyone.Matt Courtois: Hey, Ross.Ross: Good to see you again, Matt. Today we have on the podcast special guest, Karin Xie. Hi, Karin.Karin Xie: Hello, everyone! This is Karin.Ross: Do you want to tell us a bit about what you do, Karin?Karin: I'm a teacher trainer.Matt: Great. You work at a test prep school, right?Karin: Yeah. The teachers in my schools, they help students get ready for studying overseas.Ross: I think one of the interesting things about that, especially in the test prep industry, is we often see that students go to study English. They get prepared to take their IELTS or TOEFL. They go abroad and they can't actually speak English.Karin: Yeah, they mention that it's really hard for them to apply what they learned in the classes here when they go to college overseas.Ross: Yeah. We often see the same thing on teacher training courses, as well. We sometimes see people taking a CertTESOL, like an entry‑level qualification. Then, six months later, they're actually worse than they were when they finished. It's like they learned all this stuff but they haven't been able to apply it.Matt: It's amazing. They would spend 120 hours studying something and not improve from it. I don't know how that would happen.Ross: Absolutely. Today, let's talk about that and let's talk about how we can get people to apply learning. We have three questions. The first one is, how can teachers help students apply learning? The second one is...Karin: How can teachers apply what they have learned themselves into their teaching practice?Ross: And Matt?Matt: How can trainers help teachers apply learning?How Can Teachers Help Students Apply Learning Ross: Cool. OK, let's start off with teachers helping students. The classic thing here is that we want students to speak. That seems to be the industry standard for are you applying it. You have to get students to speak as much as they can by the end of the lesson. What do you guys think of that? Is that a useful paradigm?Matt: I always found it frustrating when I was a teacher to see my colleagues...I think a really common piece of advice is that you should study 10 new words a day or five new words a day. I know for me, with my Chinese...Ross: [laughs]Matt: ...I'm not very good at Chinese as you guys...Ross: That's why I laughed. Yeah.[laughter]Matt: Maybe you guys, because you're much better at Chinese than me and your English is much better than my Chinese. I have always looked at the CEFR thing and what I can do and...Ross: Order beer.Matt: Yeah. I can...Ross: Ask for the bill.Matt: I can flirt with a girl for maybe one minute.Ross: [laughs] That's all it takes.Matt: Yeah.[laughter]Matt: No, I can take a taxi. I can order food in a restaurant. That's how I measure my ability in Chinese. Is that how you guys measure...?Karin: I guess the reason that people quantify things like that is, as teachers, we need evidence of learning. If we have something like "by the end of this lesson, students would have learned these words," it's easier for teachers to evaluate their classes. They need to be aware that when teachers think they are teaching, there's not necessarily learning that's happening.Ross: Yeah. That's interesting. It reminds me of that thing, the management quote of "What gets measured gets managed." This idea that if you measure sales numbers, if that's your quantity, that becomes the most important thing in the company, what everyone gets focused on. Maybe it's the same thing in the classroom.If the easiest thing to measure is how many words can a student say by the end of the lesson, that's what the teacher ends up managing and focusing on in the class. Maybe that's not necessarily the best thing to do, right?Karin: Yeah. It reminds me of Bloom's taxonomy because when we say applying, what do we mean? What would students need to be able to do when they apply? That's like a lot of words. For example, you have things that's remembering, understanding, then analyzing, evaluating.When we want students to apply what they have learned, we could have them name things that they've learned. Name the five words that they've learned. We could have them compare what they learned in this class back to what they learned previously. We could have them evaluated, like their own learning.Ross: Yeah. Interesting. This reminds me of something I heard on the Sinica podcast. They looked at one of the differences between American and Chinese education. They talk about how Chinese education tends to focus a lot on memorization whereas what I think a lot happens in the West is that we focus on getting students to apply things.Tracy: What the Boston teacher was really great at doing is introducing a concept and then asking kids, what do you think about it? Not only that, let's apply what we just learned. The Shanghai classroom is really run very military‑style. There are 30 kids in a room and she's calling them by number, "Student number two, what is the square root of 9?" or whatever it is.Kids are popping up and answering her questions. It feels like a drill. It's like drill and kill. If you actually talk to the experts, there are certain things in math that you need to memorize.In Shanghai, at least, multiplication tables are being cemented to memory in something like the second grade. In the average American public school classroom it's not happening until a couple years later. These international math experts are saying that's a little bit too late.Matt: Even Michael Lewis for the lexical approach is all about experimenting with lexes you know in different context and everything. Even he in his book believed in the early stages of learning. He said like, "You do just need to memorize a bunch of words or you can never experiment with language in different context."Karin: I agree, yeah. There's a balance we need to have there, either the Chinese one that you mentioned or the Western one. What we need to is to remind teachers to have a variety in their classrooms so they could have the access to understand or to memorize things as well as things to compare or to evaluate.Ross: Yeah, as Matt was saying, to apply that into role‑playing, taking a taxi or flirting with someone at a bar.[laughter]Matt: Useful.How Can Teachers Apply What They Have Learned Themselves Into Their Teaching PracticeRoss: Let's talk about how can teachers themselves apply what they've learned. I thought here, it might be useful for us, in an egotistical way, to talk about ourselves. We've all done a bunch of different certificate courses and diploma courses before. What did you guys find, as a teacher learner on those courses, helped you apply what you learned? Not everyone does, right?Matt: I definitely found that I improved most as a teacher once I became a trainer.Karin: Same here.Matt: I always try to incorporate into my trainings, maybe I do it too much. I always get the trainees training other trainees.Ross: I think, for me, one of the differences in our backgrounds is that more of my background is in teaching kids than teaching adults. I always find one of the big advantages of teaching kids is they don't really have a lot in the way of expectations of what you will do in class.I found, when I was studying my diploma, I had so much opportunity to experiment in class. For example, I remember reading about the silent way and thinking, "I wonder if I could teach a class for an hour without talking." I tried it and I could.I don't think it was a great class, [laughs] but it was a great opportunity to practice what times is it not necessary to speak and what different things can I get students to do that I wouldn't do otherwise. That's something you can never do with adults because you never really have those opportunity. If you did that in an adult class, you'd get complaints.[laughter]Matt: Sure.Ross: I wanted to ask you guys, how much were you able to experiment by teaching adults? For me, with kids, it was super easy.Matt: I just think it's cool. I'm just thinking about feedback I heard from people who were taking the Dip. They would be reading about pedagogy and reading about all these classroom methods. Often they'd come to me and say, "Oh, this is fine but we're just reading about theory." I always found that so strange because it is theory about what you're doing.[crosstalk]Ross: It's theory about a practice.[laughter]Matt: Yeah, I think it's cool to hear that, as you were reading those books, you were actually applying the theories that you were reading. Often, myself included, I just read it as extra knowledge that I could have rather than something that I should be doing.Karin: When I first finished my CertTESOL course, I felt that I couldn't find opportunities to apply what I learned because during the course, I had to design classes from scratch for group of learners, consistently.When I went back to my own teaching, the classes were all made and I had to follow the classes. The flexibility of me adapting the classes is really limited comparing to what I did during the course.Ross: On training courses, we often train people to plan a class from scratch and teach that class. At least in most of the places I've worked in, that's not the situation.What people need to learn to do is not plan a lesson from scratch but follow and adapt a plan that someone else has made. Those are quite different skills. I feel that's an area where a lot of training courses don't really match up to the reality of teaching practice.How Can Trainers Help Teachers Apply LearningRoss: Guys, how do you think trainers or training systems and training courses can help teachers better apply their learning?Matt: We were talking about before, with the DipTESOL that I think it is a really good system, overall, for the whole course because it does assess every aspect of ability to be a professional in this industry. Not only do you have to be pretty good in the classroom, but you also have to be able to do research and be able to observe other teachers and talk about phonology.Ross: Yeah, and be able to answer questions about grammar on the spot, like you might get in the classroom as well.Matt: Yes. I found that maybe before the Dip. I did have some strengths as a teacher before the Dip, but by going through that process, I also had some glaring weaknesses. I became much more well‑rounded as a professional in this industry because of that course.Karin: It's really important for us trainers to encourage teacher‑learner autonomy and reflective practice because, at the end of the day, it's down to the teachers to decide how and when they're going to apply what they've learned.At the beginning of the course or even before the course starts, we really need to deal with the matter learning side of it so that teachers are reflective and teachers are autonomous.Ross: Yeah. I think that's a super good point. A lot of time, on courses, teachers do get all these opportunities to learn through peer observations, especially certificate‑level course, through observing their trainers, through teaching themselves, through getting feedback, through doing all these different things, doing research, interviewing students, blah‑blah‑blah.We could do a much better job of making them more aware of why they're going through that process and then making that learning on a metacognitive level, really explicit to people. The reason we're doing this is so you now have the skill to observe someone else, who's also a new teacher, not a great teacher, and you can learn something about your own teaching from that.Matt: Then that bit of the portfolio which, at the time, I think I didn't value very much...I bet all three of us, since we've started our new jobs and stuff, we've written our own rubrics for observing lessons. We were able to do that on that course, get feedback on it, test it out, try it and do it in a methodical way.It wasn't the first time on my job where I was going through this process, or, I don't know, writing a survey to ask for feedback from a training session that I'd written. It's not the first time I've written a survey, either, because it was taken care of that course.I mean, as I was going through it, I didn't value it. It wasn't really made explicit to me that these are skills that I will need in the future. As time went by, I look back at it and I appreciate that I went through that process.Ross: Yeah.What's Important In Applying LearningRoss: To wrap up, I need some final thoughts on what's important in applying learning.Karin: My advice is that you could do what Steve Jobs suggested. Take everything you do in your learning and your teacher learning as different dots and just bear in mind that those dots could be connected.Whatever you do or whatever you learn, for example, training course that you attended, some classes that you observed, some students that you've taught, really see them as something that's relevant to each other and constantly look back to see if you could connect the dots.Ross: OK, bye‑bye.Matt: See you!Karin: See you!

We meet with Dave Weller to discuss the issues surrounding native and non-native English teachers such as attitudes of parents and teachers, the responsibilities of language schools and how to change opinions.Tracy: Hello, everyone.Ross Thorburn: Hi, folks.Tracy: Today, we've got our regular podcast guest...Both: Dave Weller.Ross: Hello, Dave.Dave Weller: Hello, everybody. I was trying not to say hurrah again.[laughter]Dave: Regular listeners will know what I mean.Ross: Dave's here this week to talk with us about a rather controversial issue...Tracy: Which is native English speaking‑teachers versus non‑native English‑speaking teachers.Ross: Today, we've got three questions. The first one is what's all the fuss about? Second...Tracy: What do the parents and the students think about it? The third one...Ross: What can managers and schools do about it?What’s the “Native” / “Non native Teacher” debate about?Ross: Guys, what's the debate about?Tracy: Based on my understanding, just schools, parents, teachers and students feel a different mode of English ‑‑ native or non‑native...They've got advantages and disadvantages. So it seems more people, native English‑speaking teachers and have a better model of English.Ross: As well as that, it seems like there's a bit of a tendency in the industry that native speakers who are teachers will tend to get paid more. Native speakers who are teachers will tend to be given more opportunities.Dave: Actually, I read about a study that looks at higher education institutions in the UK. They found over 70 percent of them made hiring decisions for staff based on whether they were native or non‑native speakers.Ross: That doesn't surprise me a lot. It's almost like our whole methodology and approach to teaching language, doing everything in the students' L2, is almost based around having native‑speaking teachers, right?Dave: Definitely. It goes really deep. Again, there's different levels of it. It's fine if it just stayed as an opinion, but once it turns into action, policy and systems, that's where discrimination kicks in. It becomes distinctly unfair and entrenched within our industry. Despite being what a lot of people think of as a very nice and liberal industry, it hides quite a lot of trade dark secrets.Ross: Interestingly, if you do any reading on this, you find that it becomes very difficult to define what a native speaker actually is. One thing that you can't deny is that the person grew up speaking English, but when you start to look at other criteria, they're very, very woolly.It tends to be things like they can be creative with language, they don't have a foreign accent, they're aware of the culture of the language. All these things, which clearly, it's possible...Dave: Of course. Non‑native speakers have that as well.Ross: Ultimately, you get to this point where, really, the only difference between the two is that one of them grew up speaking English, and one didn't. Which, if you're learning English from someone, is pretty irrelevant, isn't it, what language or what they did in their childhood. Who cares about that?Dave: Precisely. All you really care about is how good they are as a teacher, how well then can connect with you in the classroom, they can motivate you, and all the other things that go into making up a good teacher.This whole argument actually needs to be rephrased into clearer lines. Silvana Richardson mentioned in her IATEFL that we need a new word for non‑native speakers. For me, that word would just be English teachers.There's no point devolving that word into finer detail. You should actually go back up the chain. We're all English teachers. Just some of us have different skills and backgrounds than others.If we were to do that, it would solve a lot of these problems. When you talk about a teacher, you can, "OK, which language can they speak and at what level?" That way, you can say, "Well, in the old parlance, there's this native‑speaking teacher who can speak a little bit of the learner's L1, but not to their level."Then there's a native speaker who can't speak any. Then there's a non‑native speaker who is local to the area. Then there's a non‑native speaker that isn't local from the area."Ross: Part of it is linguistic determinism. The Sapir‑Whorf hypothesis, made famous by the recent movie ‑‑ "Arrival." This idea that because of the language that we use, that we have to describe the teachers as native and non‑native teachers or speakers, that's the thing that we end up focusing on.If we changed it, and say, we called them monolingual or bilingual teachers, then which of those would you have a preference for?Dave: I agree to a point, but this is why I might be against that. I can't say everything goes as you plan. Then in 20 years' time, you actually might get a reverse situation where there's prejudice against native speakers because of the bilingualism versus monolingualism.All I think you should do is revert back to the phrase teachers and then what skills does that teacher have.What do parents and the students think about “Native” / “Non- native Teachers”?Ross: Interesting in that the research I've done on this and the survey where I looked at parents, students, teachers, and sales and service staff, and asked every group, I had a bunch of different attributes in there.For example, attitudes, qualifications, personalities, relationship with students, being native speakers, what people look like, their nationality, and their ability to speak the student's L1.The number one thing was definitely not being a native speaker. That ranked about number three or number four in people's preference. The native or non‑native speaker is...people use that as a proxy.It's something that if you don't know anything about the industry, then you can relate to that very, very easily, but if you're a parent and you don't know anything about language learning, you're not going to know what qualifications the teachers should have.It's very difficult to see what the teachers' attitudes are or their personalities, if any, or of those things. It is quite simple to check. Is this person a native speaker or not?Dave: I find it fascinating. To go back to non‑native speakerism for a second, I was reading some of Adrian Holliday's work. He said that it started out as almost a marketing ploy from various aid agencies back in the '60s to propagate the idea that native speakers were the best model.In which case, that obviously links up to the idea that Silvana Richardson said in her plenary that we can change the perception in the industry. All it takes is a little time.With research that backs this up ‑‑ research coming out that actually says that it's not just OK, but beneficial to use L1 in the classroom ‑‑ you put those things together, then this is the way forward to actually eradicate bias in our industry.Ross: Let me play you that quote from Silvana now.Silvana Richardson: Employers always have choices. Collusion with inequality and prejudice is a choice. Discrimination is a choice. As Rajagopalan says, "In our neoliberal world, who will dare challenge what the market dictates?"The answer to this is, just because the market is demanding certain things, it does not mean that the market itself cannot be made to perceive things differently.Ross: Do you think that's true? Is that realistic though, that the market can be made to perceive...Dave: Of course, it is. Yeah, definitely. If you look on an individual on a mass scale, how many times have we changed our minds over the course of our professional development over the last 10, 15 years?Precisely, it's the same thing with the industry. Industries change, ideas change, views change. It happens usually, I would argue, from the ground up rather than direct from above, especially in an industry such as ours which is quite fragmented and has no overarching body to dictate the standards.Tracy: I still think there is a huge market, because you just look at the education companies doing online or offline. The business...they create the scenario, and having native English teachers is the better choice.Ross: In that case, do you think it's an easier or difficult or a long or short task to change the way that Chinese parents and students see local teachers?Tracy: It's going to be a long way. I have to say all the non‑native teachers need to work really hard, because if you constantly made the mistakes, and you constantly misspell the word, and you constantly use the utterances or expressions that people don't normally use, and use those language to teach your students, there is a problem.Ross: It's so unfair, because I see a lot of really bad native‑speaking teachers [laughs] who don't get picked up on making teaching mistakes or methodological mistakes.Dave: Or even language mistakes of teaching language which is highly improbable, possible but doesn't often get used. They end up teaching...It's, maybe, not going technically wrong, but you'll hear people teaching language that never gets used.Ross: They're from one particular part of the Deep South in America and they use a phrase that only them and their family and the people in that village use and are like, "I've never heard it before."I don't see them getting picked up on those mistakes. They tend to get a free pass because they're a native speaker. That's really unfair.Tracy: A lot of teachers or parents always say, "Oh, I want my student or my child to speak Standard English," or "All the students should learn Standard English."Dave: There's no such thing anymore, is there?Ross: I don't think so. Is that a cultural concept that exists in China? There is a standard Chinese, but there's no Standard English.Dave: Let's play devil's advocate just for a second. I can clearly understand what they mean though. Even though we're looking at it from a technician's point of view, we're looking at it from a point of view of professionals in the industry. What parents mean...it's almost like the shadows on Plato's cave, to take it deep for a second.The concept of a horse, despite all horses can look slightly different...Again, they're using that term as a proxy of an English that will be understood around the world. No matter where they go, it'll be effortless to be able to communicate with other English‑speaking teachers and not be hindered in any way through pronunciation or grammar or phrase. That's shorthand for what they're trying to say.Ross: Indeed, but is it not also the case that a very, very small percentage of learners will learn English or an accent or something to the point where they're at that level of, "Oh, I want to sound English" or "I want to sound American," but, really, for most of the students I've taught, even after years, they sound Chinese, because...Dave: Maybe your students, Ross.[laughter]Dave: Sorry, that's such a flippant answer. No, I completely agree with your point. In fact, I'd even add to that and say, it's not about increasing their level. It's about teaching the skills to grade their language if they do encounter another non‑native speaker who has trouble understanding their accent, maybe because they're from a quite different culture. Again, you're arguing against a perception and a belief.What can managers and schools do about “Native” / Non-native Teacher” discriminationRoss: Can we talk for a minute about language schools and, maybe, what language schools can do about that? I've got another Silvana quote for you. Do you mind if I play this briefly?Dave: Please do.Silvana: This is part of the California/Nevada's position paper opposing discrimination against non‑native English speaking teachers. It says, "Teaching job announcements that indicate a preference or requirement for a native speaker of English trivialize the professional development teachers have received and teaching experience they have already acquired.Such announcements are also discriminatory and ultimately harm all teachers ‑‑ native or not ‑‑ by devaluing teacher education, professionalism, and experience.Ross: To what extent do you guys agree or disagree with that?Dave: 100 percent. Again, I really speak with authority from my background, which is as a native speaker. Again, it does trivialize my experience and the amount of work I've put in over the last 15 years of professional development, studying...Ross: Getting qualifications and things...Dave: Precisely. The extra work I've put in ‑‑ thousands of hours ‑‑ and then to be reduced to being called, "He's a native speaker. He'll do."Ross: It still happens so often. Tracy, you had something like that a few weeks ago over organizing a teacher training thing here. Again, you've obviously got your diploma, you're studying your MA, you've been a tutor and a course director on accredited courses.The people running the course said, "Oh, can you make sure there's a native speaker or foreigner for at least half the course?"Dave: Who's just finished a 40‑hour online course, perhaps.Ross: Or maybe not even that. Isn't it fascinating that that still persists?Tracy: They even didn't care about what qualifications or experience they have. Also interesting, the person from the organization even asked me, "Can you tell me more about this trainer?"I said, "OK. Maybe I can ask this person to send the CV, send the training, teaching experience." She said, "We really don't care about it. Just tell me his age, which country he's from, and also if he's white or black."Ross: What about on the flip side for a minute then, Dave? As someone who used to be a director of studies before in a school where you had to make hiring decisions, where's this balance? Were you ever in some tough situations there?Dave: [laughs] Yes.Ross: How did that work out then?Dave: The thing is, as a manager ‑‑ anyone who's been a manager, I'm sure, can relate to this ‑‑ you have to pick and choose your battles. That was the one that I'll actually go to bat for.If you had several candidates and various degrees of discrimination in different things as one that Tracy mentioned earlier about someone's skin color, also about non‑native speaking teachers, you just go and not actually ask if these persons' qualified, they're capable, they've gone through the interview process, and that they would be a good fit for this team, they'd be a good fit for this country, and they'd be a great fit for our school.Then you'd put your foot down. You'd have an argument, almost, with the culture of the school. If you won ‑‑ sometimes you did, sometimes you didn't ‑‑ often, unfortunately, it depended on how badly the school needed teachers, and how many classes waiting you had, how many students waiting to start class.Unfortunately, it was usually the deciding factor. Once the teacher arrived, whereas the students after a few lessons, would be delighted with the experienced teacher, the parents would turn and become delighted and insist on having that teacher as a future teacher for their children.What’s does the future hold for “Non-native English teachers”?Dave: It's always sad that we actually have to do this, or that it's something that we do have to get passionate about. Do spread the word on.I'm very optimistic about it. I like to think there are enough people out there that people will go back, spread the word, and take small actions. There will be this groundswell of people that do this.Ross: All right, Dave, thanks very much for coming on. It was a pleasure talking to you again.Dave: It's a pleasure to be here, as always. Thank you.[background music]Tracy: Thanks, Dave. Bye, everybody.Ross: Bye.Tracy: For more podcasts, videos, and blogs, visit our website...Both: Www.tefltraininginstitute.com.Ross: If you've got a question or a topic you'd like us to discuss, leave us a comment...Tracy: If you want to keep up to date with our latest content, add us on WeChat @tefltraininginstitute.Ross: If you enjoyed our podcast, please rate us on iTunes.

This episode we look into the dark secret of the TEFL industry - teacher turnover. If you’re a manager, how many of these teacher turnover blunders are being made in your school?Tracy Yu: Welcome to the "TEFL Training Institute" podcast, the bite‑sized TEFL podcast for teachers, trainers and managers.Ross Thorburn: Tracy, how long have you worked in the same company for?Tracy: Almost 10 years. A long time.Ross: You must have renewed your contract a whole bunch of times then, have you?Tracy: Yeah.Ross: Can you tell me some of the reasons why you decided to stay?Tracy: I remember clearly the first time I renewed. I was really, really sure that I enjoyed the job teaching. I also enjoyed working with my colleagues and I liked the work environment. I listed the pros and cons and I think the schedule is not great but...Tracy: ...compared to some other factors, I think, yeah, I definitely want to stay.Ross: What about more recently?Tracy: For last two times, when I renewed contract, it's mainly because there were new challenges and the position has been changed. I can say got promoted or doing different role.Ross: When I do training with managers and I usually ask them, "What's the number one thing that motivates teachers?" Can you guess what they say?Tracy: Let me guess. I will say money...Ross: Yeah.Tracy: ...is one of them?Ross: Some people always say money and yet, again, there, none of the things that you said really were related to money. It was career development, it was your peers, it was enjoying teaching, all those different things.Tracy: I won't deny, salary increase would definitely going to be one reason why people, they are staying or they're changing jobs, but I don't think from my experience, that was the main reason why I did that.Ross: Today, we're going to look at teacher motivation and teacher retention and we've got three questions.Tracy: The first one, what are the common mistakes for teacher retention?Ross: What can managers and organizations do to retain teachers? Finally...Tracy: Why it's important for managers and organizations to keep teachers and to motivate them?What Are The Common Mistakes For Teacher Retention?Ross: Tracy, what do you think of some of the maybe common mistakes that managers and organizations make?Tracy: You mentioned earlier about money?Ross: Yeah.Tracy: I would say most people just assume, OK, no salary increase and compared to other organizations in this field, and the salary is not very competitive, that's why people leave because people live in the real world. They want to get more money, have a better living standard.Ross: Money is important, right?Tracy: Yeah. No one [laughs] is going to say no.[laughter]Tracy: Why do the managers still believe that's the main reason or the number one reason why people stay?Ross: Or why people leave? I think it's just a very 19th century, like a Victorian, very simple way of looking at motivation. A very capitalist way of looking at it. If you want people to do something, offer them money and they'll do it. I think the reason that doesn't work for teachers is because if you were someone that was really, really motivated by money, you wouldn't have become a teacher.Tracy: That's true. That's not the really wealthy industry, to be honest.[crosstalk]Ross: ...or you'd become a lawyer or you'd try to become a doctor, or you'd have become a sales person, but you wouldn't have moved to Prague and got a teaching job. At least for me, when I moved to China, I took a pay cut of about...I was getting paid, I think, a quarter or a fifth of what I getting paid before in the UK.That is not to say money is not important to me, but it's obviously not the main driving reason behind what I'm doing. Otherwise, I wouldn't take a 70 percent pay cut for a new job. I was sure that there was other factors that are important.Tracy: I think that will lead to the next one that I've been thinking about because a lot of time, the managers they believe what they believe. They never ask the teacher, "Is this the reason why you stay or is why the reason you leave?"Ross: There's a quote in the Bible, I think, isn't there? It's like, "Do unto others as you would have do unto you." Have you heard this before?Tracy: Yeah, I think so.[crosstalk]Tracy: It doesn't work...Ross: This is like treat other people the way you want to be treated.There's a quote from George Bernard Shaw who says, "Do not do unto others as they expect they should do unto you. Their tastes may not be the same." Obviously, different people are motivated by different things, but I think this is assumption that what motivates me must be the same as what motivates you.The big problem in organizations is that senior managers do get a high salary and probably are quite motivated by money. They may assume, "Oh, that must be the same for teachers," but it's not.Tracy: Yeah. That's a good point. A lot of managers of organizations don't really listen to teachers and what they really need and what motivates them because I think...We talk about sit down with teachers at different time, maybe before the probation or other probation six months or one year or different year before contract.You just maybe have a regular meeting or conversation with your teacher and just find out what's going on with them and what they really need.Ross: I think listening is the key thing there.Tracy: Exactly.Ross: If you're doing a review with someone after however long, that the main person speaking in the review to be the employee not the managers so you can find out more about what interests them, what their goals are, why they're doing the job. If you don't know those things, how can you expect to motivate someone?Tracy: A lot of teacher I talk to, at least, some teachers say, "Do you really think that I'm doing this job for money? No, because I want to really help people and to see my students develop, to learn something. I want to see their happy face at the end of the class." Don't assume people do or stay this job just because of money.What can managers and organizations do to retain teachers?Tracy: You've been a manager for a few years. What are the secrets for you as a manager to keep your staff?Ross: If you care for your staff and you say, "Oh, I know that you're going to leave one day. What I want to do in the next year, we want to give you some of the skills and things that are going to help you get to the next position, either on this company or outside this company."Say, you've told me you want to run your own center, school, or your own CertTESOL school, then great. "Great. OK, let's work on having a plan for you over the next year so that you can get skills, so that you'll be able to run your own school in a year's time, or two years' time." You're much more likely to stay with me for those two years.I think it's counter‑intuitive for people because I think people think, "Oh, I don't want to encourage my staff to leave." I think you want to encourage your staff to achieve their goals and those goals will probably usually be outside the company.For me, that secret is like listening to them, finding out what is it they want to achieve in the future, and then help them to make sure they get the skills in their current job that'll help them get there in the future. Your aim isn't to keep people until they're 65.Tracy: Yeah.[laughter]Ross: Your aim is to keep people as if keeping them for one year, keeping them for three years or four years.Tracy: That's an interesting point, though, because even for employee or for teachers and they stay longer and then automatically, we believe, "OK, the reason why I stay another year because I want to have a promotion." Of course, that's fine, but after what you mentioned, and then you think about, "OK, I'm going stay another year or two. What can I get out of it?"Ross: Yeah, exactly. That's why you want to talk to people about. What do you want to get out of staying here for another year and having that conversation with people?Tracy: That's my point. Just accept the position, the title, and the real skills and the competencies and knowledge and all that kinds of stuff, and people need to consider more. You know what I mean?Ross: I think that's something that managers need to help people to realize. For a lot of people, it's like, "Oh, I'm going to be standing up in front of a room of 15 kids again for a year teaching them ABC."[laughs] There's a lot more in a way of skills that you can get out of that that can help you to get a better job or something when you leave, or you can study a qualification or something that's going to help you get a different job when you leave.It's helping people realize what are the skills that you need for the future and then how can we make sure that you get those skills in your current position.Tracy: Yeah. In another word, I think, just to try to let them see their value in this team work, in this company...[crosstalk]Ross: It's just part, I think of recognizing people. I think it's about recognizing the right things. It's not about saying, "Well, well done. You got the most student retention, or you got the highest demonstration class conversion," or, "Well done. You came to work on time every day for the last month." It's about praising people for things that they want to be praised for.Tracy: Can I ask you here? I'm just confused that should we ask them or do you want me?Ross: You don't need to ask people like, "What do you want to be praised for exactly?" You can find out what people think that they're good at doing, and I think praising people for, "You made the most money for our company every month."That's great if it's a sales person because that is the role of a sales person, it's to make money. If it's a teacher and you praise them for making money, then you're not going to keep people who are very suited for the teaching profession.That all comes down to like you were saying at the beginning, getting to know people's motivation, understand...[crosstalk]Ross: ...and then sitting down with someone on the first day in the new job and say, "Why are you here? What do you want to get out of this?"Tracy: What if the teacher says, "I just want to come here to travel"?Ross: That's fine.Tracy: How can you help them?Ross: That was what I wanted to do in the beginning.Tracy: How can you do that to relate to their retention? Because you know they're going to leave. "I don't care..."Ross: I didn't leave. I came here to travel and I'm still in the same country, in the same organization 10 years later. People's motivations change and we know, again, from research that the majority of what's called Self‑initiated Expats, SIEs, so people who make the decision themselves to go abroad.One of the most common reasons, and the most common reason for language schools is, that they want to travel. Of course, give those people opportunities to do that but they might enjoy the job as I did. Like I really, really enjoyed teaching and as time has gone by, my motivations for staying in this profession, this industry have changed.Why it's important for managers and organizations to keep teachers and to motivate them?Tracy: We talked a lot about the common mistakes and how we motivate and keep teachers. Why do we do that? Why do we care about doing it?Ross: The main, I think, reason for big organizations is just it's very, very expensive to recruit teachers from abroad. You could save so much money by just keeping teachers in the same position for longer.That's the big picture. I think if it comes down to the small picture about teachers and students, then as a teacher, the most important thing you can do is understand and get to know your students.Tracy: Yeah, that's the common feedback that I heard when I met some students in the center and just say, "Oh, OK. After my six months alternative leave, I came back and there's no teacher in this school. I really know. They all left." I think that's a really, really bad effect on the students. It's definitely bad for the students.Ross: It's not necessarily saying that every teacher who's been teaching for five years is better than every teacher who's been teaching for six months. I think it's pretty much always true that you're a better teacher after five years than you were after one year. I definitely was.Tracy: Another thing is, similar to recruitment, is training, because we're doing training. [laughs] You know how much time and efforts we spend with the teachers and then they leave.That's the most frustrating thing for a trainer, at least for me. I have the teachers, I spend all the time, I'll be one or two weeks with them, and then you'll just see in six months or a year and they just left. They can do a really good job but...you know what I mean, and have to train new people again, again, again, and again.Ross: Which is really, really costly for organizations, right?Tracy: Yeah, exactly because they have to pay us to do training and stuff.Ross: This is something that's becoming more and more common not just in education but everywhere. If you look at my parents, they pretty much stayed in the same jobs for about 30‑something years. For your parents, how long did they work in the same companies for?Tracy: Their whole life, yeah.Ross: Yeah.Tracy: Definitely. More than 30 years.Ross: Right. I think now, things are changing a lot faster and I think the world average according to LinkedIn is only something like four years that people stay in the same company.Tracy: Of course, nowadays, we don't expect people to stay in the same company, same position 5, 10 years because that's unrealistic. Again, don't want to spend a lot of time and money, keep hiring new people and training them.Wrap UpTracy: Ross, you just started a new job. If you have a chance to tell your manager three things that can motivate you, what they are going to be?Ross: The team I work with is really important in my last job. I really loved all the people that I had worked with and that kept me there for quite a long time.As a manager, having control over who you hire is really, really important. Things like your work schedule and your work‑life balance is also super important especially nowadays. That's something that research has shown as important for every generation.For me, working overtime isn't a problem occasionally, but I know of some people and friends who've had to work six days a week and 12 hours a day every day for two years. Those people obviously quit.Making sure there's some work‑life balance. Professional growth and development, it might not be getting like doing tons of training courses or anything, but it might just be the opportunity to research and present at conferences.Tracy: That's very good advice.Ross: I hope she's listening.Tracy: [laughs] Good luck. All right. Bye, everyone.

On today's show: -What can you do to protect your identity after the MASSIVE Equifax data breach? We've got you covered! As mentioned on the show, check out the MagnifyMoney Guide to Credit Monitoring and Identity Theft Protection and our tips on what to do after the hack.  -Tiffany's got a house update! Is it good news? -#EmmysSoBrown Today's question from listener Tracy: "What do I do when my landlord's home goes into foreclosure and they want to evict me?"