Who’s behind all this?
Hi,
Thank you for visiting my blog.
My name’s Anthony Gaughan and I work as an English Language Teacher and Teacher-Trainer in Hamburg, Germany. I started working in ELT in 1995 and have mostly worked in the UK and Germany, with short trips to Poland, Czech Republic, Hungary and Slovakia.
I am both a trainer and a Cambridge ESOL appointed Assessor for the CELTA award, and I also designed and ran courses leading to the former English UK/LCCI Certificate in Teaching English for Business (CertTEB).
I hold Qualified Teacher Status (PGCE-QTS) in the UK state education system, Cambridge ESOL DELTA, a BA in English Language and Literature, and I am currently working on my dissertation for an MA in Applied Linguistics and ELT.
I am especially interested in unplugged approaches such as DOGME ELT as well as use of technology (which may seem like an unlikely combination…)
I started this blog with my colleague Izzy to help us capture and document changes that we were making on our own CELTA courses, which developed into a talk at IATEFL Harrogate 2010 (you can find a recording of that talk here) – I try to update this blog as often as possible – which isn’t as often as I would like!
I hope you find something here which stimulates you – feel free to contact me via the blog or via teachertrainingunplugged@gmx.de
Anthony,
Thanks very much for all of this. So glad we met in Brighton, my only regret being that I cannot make it to Barcelona. After that polite beginning, can I play Devil’s Advocate about one issue? I describe myself as firmly of the Dogme faith, but about one issue I am definitely agnostic. Is there any evidence, anecdotal or other, that clearly indicates that it is “noticing” and dealing with emergent language that helps dogme learners to make significant language progress? How people learn and acquire language is such a mystery and “dealing with” language is so exercise-like that I have – until now – quietly wondered if getting learners to “notice” and somehow rework emerged language is no more than the old guilty feeling of the conscientious teacher to do something, get the learners to do something, to spend class time profitably instead of just letting learning go on however it does. Who really benefits from from that assiduous note-taking, all the learners or teacher/instructor/facilitator
Open to persuasion,
Dennis
It was a pleasure meeting you properly at Brighton 2011 too, Dennis (we also met very fleetingly at a workshop in Berlin many moons ago)
“Where’s yer evidence?!”
I’ve never been good at remembering references and am away from my library, but two possible sources of persuasion come to mind:
“It is not yet clear which kind of instruction works best but there is evidence t suggest that focusing learners’ attention on forms, and the meaning they realise in the context of communicative activities, results in successful language learning” (Rod Ellis (1994) The Study of Second Language Acquisition, OUP)
Long’s Interaction Hypothesis and related research. Admittedly, this fronts the power of negotiation for meaning (which I share doubts about with Prof. Pauline Foster) but it also has something to say about the basic validity of focusing on emergent language over programmed input – if we are to focus on anything at all!
But of course you are questioning precisely that – whether there is a point in explicit language study at all! I don’t have a neat answer for you, but a couple of thoughts:
at this stage we do not have any reason to believe it is doing any harm to learning/acquisition
explicit attention and heightened concentration seem to correlate with learning and achievement in other domains (a personal anecdote in lieu of empirical data) I master fencing strokes better when I am in a state of relaxed concentration and when my master focuses my attention on areas of my execution which I could do differently)
Certainly not a compelling case I’ve presented here, but it’S the best I can do in the absence of a library and a cup of coffee
I really like your blog. Keep up the good work.
Thank you – I really appreciate it. Looks like you have some interesting work yourself!
So pleased I’d like to leave a message in this space. It’s much more a request. In fact, I’ve been working since 2000 as a language teacher in different schools in Algeria. I’m looking for where I can find a training to become a language teacher trainer. Please, help me!!
Thank you very much!
Thank you for visiting! Big question: basically you can start as a teacher trainer by taking some training yourself or by simply starting to do it.
I started by offering my school to run a workshop or two, which I later offered to do for my local teachers association. Then, my school asked me to train as a CELTA tutor, as we were going to start running those courses.
That’s the “just do it” path, which can work if you have local opportunities like I did. If you don’t, than perhaps a training course like “train the trainer” offered by Pilgrims may help you get a job later. The British Council also have local projects where they train teachers to become mentors and teacher trainers, so contacting them for information would also be a good idea.
Hope this helps, apologies for the delay in replying and best of luck!
Hi Anthony, did you do your MA at Leicester? I just finished mine there and your name is strangely familiar….
Hi Gabrielle,
Thanks for stopping by. No, I didn’t do my MA at Leicester so I can’t be familiar from there. I comment on various blogs, or you may have come across me via IATEFL of something like that. Or perhaps you also went to Royal Holloway for your BA? Or are you a fencer? Shooting in the dark now