Emergent Language Explained (Talking ELT Special #4)

[00:00:07] Speaker A: And welcome to this special episode of Talking elt. And we're going to do a little experiment. [00:00:12] Speaker B: Maybe they've been arrested. [00:00:15] Speaker A: Today we're exploring emergent language and how those moments of spontaneous, unplanned language can become some of the most powerful learning opportunities in the classroom. [00:00:26] Speaker B: And the teacher came in and I said, oh, by the way, okay, guys, what were your guesses? Then she looked at the board and she came down up to us and she said, how did they know all those words? [00:00:39] Speaker A: In this episode, Ed Dudley and myself are joined by Danny Norrington Davis and Richard Chin to unpack what emergent language really is, how it links to ideas like Dogme ELT and how you can use it in your classroom. [00:00:54] Speaker B: I think the students feel seen and heard by you, working with what they're trying to say. [00:01:01] Speaker C: We could say reserved. I explained to you reserved is less offensive. So which would you like to choose? And she said, I'm cold. It's about choice. She didn't want to be offensive. [00:01:11] Speaker A: Trying to express this idea of that it's warm but it's cold because of the wind. And I sort of didn't mean to, but I said, oh, wind chill factor. His eyes lit up. [00:01:23] Speaker D: It was a lovely example of oh, wow. That has become part of their activity. [00:01:29] Speaker A: Whether this is a completely new concept to you or something you've been curious about for a while, this conversation offers practical insights and fresh perspectives on how language learning actually happens. Let's get started. [00:01:50] Speaker B: Great. [00:01:51] Speaker A: Ok, well, welcome. Welcome to Oxford. Welcome to Oxford University Press. Guys, it's great to have you here. We're all super excited to talk about this topic today. Danny, Richard, Ed, take any turns and just introduce yourselves for our audience. Give us a little nugget about who you are, where you come from. Maybe. Chuck, in a fun fact, have you got an interesting tattoo? Did you do anything unusual this summer? What's your favourite band? Away you go. [00:02:20] Speaker B: Okay, so my name's Danny Norrington Davis. I'm a teacher and teacher trainer at International House London. I've been teaching for about 30 years and still really, really enjoying it. All those things you said, the interesting fact, I've could have answered each one. So I'll tell you the tattoo one. I have an older than I've been teaching. Unfinished tattoo. [00:02:44] Speaker A: Unfinished. [00:02:46] Speaker B: It was so painful. [00:02:47] Speaker A: Yeah. [00:02:47] Speaker B: I said I'd come back the next day. It's been about 35 years. One day. One day I'll come back. [00:02:54] Speaker C: Can I ask the question? Where is it? [00:02:56] Speaker A: Oh, that was not the question. I was thinking of I was thinking, which part isn't finished? Is it like a sort of tailless tiger? [00:03:03] Speaker B: The color. Oh, the color, yeah. [00:03:05] Speaker A: Oh, that's not too bad. [00:03:07] Speaker B: Yeah, yeah. [00:03:07] Speaker A: And you patted your gluteus maximus there. [00:03:10] Speaker B: Yeah. [00:03:10] Speaker A: Okay. [00:03:10] Speaker B: Don't get a tattoo there. [00:03:11] Speaker A: Okay. [00:03:12] Speaker D: Interesting. [00:03:13] Speaker A: Fantastic. [00:03:14] Speaker C: So I'm Richard. I'm also a teacher trainer and I've been in English language teaching for over 20 years. I work mostly at King's College London, or only at King's College London at the moment. But also I'm very much associated with International House London. I'm also going to go with the tattoo story because I also have a tattoo in the same place that you just pointed to. [00:03:33] Speaker B: No. Plutus Maximus. [00:03:35] Speaker C: But I can't decide. [00:03:36] Speaker B: At some point, I just didn't want PETAs think it was on my. [00:03:40] Speaker C: But mine does age me, you know, dates me into when I had it done. Because I had it done when I was quite young. I was 18, and I'd been nagging to get a tattoo. And so me and my dad. My dad had also been nagging to get a tattoo and wasn't allowed. And so we both nagged and we both went to go and get a tattoo done together. [00:03:58] Speaker A: Father and son tattoo trick. [00:04:00] Speaker C: They said they'd never had it before at the tattoo parlour somewhere in Birmingham back in the late 1990s. And it's a. It's some sort of Celtic knot, so it dates me to the 1990s very clearly. [00:04:14] Speaker A: Fantastic. Thank you for sharing, Ed. You're welcome. [00:04:17] Speaker D: I'm Ed. I work at Oxford University Press. Also a teacher trainer. Before that, a teacher. And I had the pleasure of talking to you both earlier about this topic for the LTOC online conference. So I'm really interested in hearing more about it from you. And if we're talking tattoos, I haven't got a tattoo. But, Richard, it's unbelievable what you said, because my daughter and I have a pact that on my 70th birthday, really, we'll both go together and she will get us both tattoos. [00:04:45] Speaker C: She's got to choose. [00:04:46] Speaker D: Yeah. [00:04:47] Speaker C: By that point, I suppose. [00:04:48] Speaker D: And she's now trying to get it done. Can you say 60 rather than 70? So it's getting closer and closer and closer. [00:04:54] Speaker A: Wonderful. Okay. And I'll finish off by saying I have the word hip tattooed on my hip. [00:05:00] Speaker B: Really? [00:05:00] Speaker A: You have to decide if that's true or not. [00:05:02] Speaker C: Ah, brilliant. [00:05:04] Speaker A: So emergent language. Okay. I mean, even that term itself is interesting. I think emergent is not a word you hear much. I mean, I hadn't heard it much. I expected emerging emerging language. But I mean emergent language. [00:05:17] Speaker C: Funny you should say that. [00:05:18] Speaker A: So sort of what is it? Give us a working definition that we can get our heads around and I don't mind. Which one of you does that? [00:05:27] Speaker B: Well, so we had the slide when we were talking to you, Ed. So it's the unplanned language that happens during a lesson and usually during the meaning focus stage of lesson. So when students are talking together or interacting with the teacher, and once it's sort of come into the classroom, the teacher then responds to it, either through reformulation or just exploring the language a little bit, clarifying it if the students don't know what it means. And yeah, it's very much unplanned. It's not just error. A lot of people think it's just error. It's not key thing unplanned meaning interaction and teacher doing something with it, unless the students do something with it themselves. [00:06:13] Speaker A: Okay, great. [00:06:14] Speaker C: Richard, can I add to that a little bit? So, as Danny quite rightly said, it's not just error. So it's not just picking up on the things that learners say that are mistakes or wrong. It could be, for example, and it can be teacher initiated or it can be learner initiated, or it can come along a client like that. But it could be, for example, when something interesting comes up in class that you didn't expect, it could come from the learners. Or very often one thing that we have noticed is when we want to provide learners with an alternative way of saying something to push them on developmentally. So it's definitely not an error. But, you know, we might hear a learner say, I don't know, I collect my children from school every day. And then you could reformulate that and say, okay, well that's fine what you said. You know, let's say they're an intermediate learner, we want to push them on. [00:07:04] Speaker B: You could say pick up, I suppose, [00:07:06] Speaker C: get I get my kids from school and you could explore the formality or when you use that particular language in order to help broaden the learner's linguistic repertoire and to give them choices with language as well. So that's very much what we see as part of emergent language. It's not just errors, and that's one part of it. It's actually beyond that. [00:07:28] Speaker B: We actually wanted to use the term emerging language, but it was kind of taken. So very often it's about. There's a whole field about child language and the development of language through your childhood but also about there's emerging languages as well. So how language itself is evolving. So the simple idea of doing a search, if you search emergent language, it tends to come up as the sort of language learning definition. And emerging language does a bit, but it also talks about childhood. [00:07:59] Speaker C: And in practical terms, a lot of people use them interchangeably. [00:08:04] Speaker B: I do. [00:08:04] Speaker C: IH they use it and kind of. We do we settle on emergent because it was the term that was out there that we. That we were working with really. So we actually settled on that one. But we had a lot of discussion about it. And I think Diane Lawson Freeman talks about, you know, the ing form of the word has that feeling of movement and duration in it. And we thought maybe that's it should be that because it kind of captures that feeling of movement. But we decided to stick with what's [00:08:34] Speaker B: common out there, I think wanting to stay true to the huge influence of Dogma ELT and their use of the term immersion. Scott Thornbury and Meddings use of the term emergent language. I'm glad we did actually. Now. Yeah. [00:08:47] Speaker A: So just to pick up on that then, because you mentioned a couple of things there which not everybody would necessarily know straight off the bat. So we know what emergent language is. You decided to call it emergent language. We know what it is. It's these unplanned moments that students often sort of, you know, they crop up in lessons and sort of their opportunities for sort of input. Say a little bit more, Danny, about sort of Dog May and what is that and sort of what's the connection to emergent language? I mean, people will have heard of [00:09:18] Speaker B: it, but Dog May was. Scott Thornbury was the person who was really behind the kind of Dogme movement. And it was really about. He called it. Also called it teaching Unplugged. And that's the book he wrote with Luke was very much about Materials Light teaching and working with the interactions that students generated in the class. So materials Light was one of the tenants. And obviously from that emergent language was because if you're going to work with what is happening in the classroom, the learning is going to come from the emergent language. The third tenant I've. [00:09:59] Speaker C: The key thing is that the idea is it's all about conversation. So the class. The interaction in class should be conversation. Like there's lots of people who say that's not that possible in a. In a classroom because a classroom is a particular kind of space. But the idea is it's a conversation. And through that conversation, because it's meaning focused. [00:10:18] Speaker B: Yeah. [00:10:19] Speaker C: And you've got the materials out the way. There's no materials getting in the way through the interaction. Language emerges and then you work with it that way. [00:10:26] Speaker B: Great. [00:10:27] Speaker C: Good. [00:10:27] Speaker A: I mean, Ed, was this new to you? I mean, you're in contact with teachers all the time. Did they sort of know about this or not? [00:10:33] Speaker D: Yes and no. I think one of the really reassuring things about listening to you talk earlier was the fact that you kept saying that this is something which teachers do already, even if they don't have the name for it. But I also thought it was really interesting what you said about emergent language against target language. Could you recap that for us or say a bit more about that? [00:10:53] Speaker C: Yes. I mean, it's a tricky distinction to make, but a basic one we could make is that target language is the language that you want to teach that day. It's the language in the syllabus. Let's say you've got, I don't know, the present perfect for life experiences. That's your target language that you want to teach. You're going to focus on that. You're going to raise awareness of the language, practice it in some sort of way and hope that that, you know, primes the learners to recognize it in the future or learn it. Whereas emergent language isn't planned. It's something that happens because there's a breakdown in communication, perhaps. Or maybe you notice that the learners could say something in a more appropriate way, or this word we'll talk about in a minute for this situation that they're using it in. So that would be the distinction between the two. One is planned, the other is unplanned. I mean, of course, if you're working on target language and suddenly a student asks a question about something else, there's a. The target language could be a springboard for emergent language as well. So they don't neatly separate, really. [00:11:53] Speaker B: So on something like a CELTA course, very often it's very. [00:11:56] Speaker A: A certificate of English Language Teaching to adults. [00:11:59] Speaker B: Entry level. Entry level teaching qualification. Very often you are supposed to be writing a lesson plan for your lesson. So your aims will be. By the end of the lesson, students will be better able to use the present perfect to describe experiences. And that's the plan. And we would then be saying in a lesson like that, you'd want to see a little space for emergent language, perhaps coming out of a lead in where the student wants a word or a phrase, or it might come out of a listening or reading text or the Final speaking activity in the lesson. If you're taking a sort of present the language, practice the language, produce the language, ppp Type language. [00:12:38] Speaker D: Yeah. What's so interesting about that is I think at one point in my teaching career I would have thought, oh, so there's a gap in my lesson plan. There's a void there. It's emptiness. Whereas what you said is it's the opposite of that. It's creating space for something to emerge. [00:12:58] Speaker C: I think that's the thing. The tendency for us as teachers is to want to plan everything down to the last minute, you know, so that there's no dead time in the lesson or there's no bit where it's slack. But actually if you do that, you're not really leaving any room for learning, for learning opportunities, because we need to respond to what the learners actually want and need in the lesson. And it's really, I think learning that that is not dead time that you have. It's actually important time that can be used. But as teachers, you've got to think, how do I go about using that time? And that's different way of looking at it, I think. [00:13:32] Speaker A: Can you perhaps sort of help fill in the gaps for us in terms of sort of maybe tell us about a time when you sort of first recognized the power of it, or in your own teaching, a sort of memorable moment when you thought, oh, okay, I'm going to jump on this because it's got potential to shake up the lesson or do something interesting. [00:13:50] Speaker C: I mean, I don't think I can. You know, I'm sure Danny feels like this because it just became part of my practice. I don't know whether I valued it, you know, that I was doing it. I was working with emergent language. In fact, we had an email from a former trainee from over 10 years ago who's recently read our work and said, it's great. It's given me a framework to understand what I do in class. So he was doing a lot of these things, but didn't really value them and didn't really think about the skill that was involved in them. And when you think about that, then you've got more options of other things that you can do in class. Class as well. So it kind of. I think it was part of my practice, but I wasn't sure if I was doing the right thing for a long time. And I think there was a bit of doubt that it was useful. And I think it was. It took a lot of exploration to realize that actually this is useful because my Gut feeling was the bits of the lesson that went very fast were the kind of improvisational moments. The bit where we were all seem to be enjoying ourselves and suddenly it was, you know, the end of the lesson and we hadn't really done what was supposed to be in the course book. So, you know, for me it was, you know, starting to value those moments in class. [00:14:56] Speaker B: Yeah, for me it was. I mean, again, it's been a long time of doing it, but. So I sort of can't remember a me by myself type moment. But years and years ago, I was asked to stand by while a teacher was late. I work in London International House London. So we've all been there, people. Teachers are often late because of transport issues. And they said, oh, can elementary class, can you just go up and babysit? We call it babysitting these adults. So I said, oh, I'm really sorry, everyone, the teacher's coming, but they're going to be late. And a student said, oh, what's, where's the teacher? And I said, I don't know, guess. And we probably spent about 20 minutes, 20 minutes guessing. And I said, you know, let's be creative, let's think of some more things. And we had things like, miss, the bus alarm didn't go off, there was a problem with the tubes. And they were saying things, maybe they've been arrested. And the teacher came in handcuffs. And the teacher came in and I said, oh, by the way, okay, guys, what were your guesses? And it was missed the bus, basically. But then she looked at the board and she came down afterwards and she said, how did they know all those words? And I said, well, they didn't, but they knew what they meant. So they were saying things. Oh, they lost the bus and our tube broken. It's, oh, the tube broke down. I don't know if you say broke down. So it's that moment of a sort of teacher going, I don't understand how elementaries can do that. It's like they can't, but they can now. They'll forget all those words and they'll have to be reintroduced and recycled. [00:16:53] Speaker A: But wonderfully graphic about. Students know what they want to say, really. We often think that they turn up [00:17:01] Speaker B: and they haven't got a clue. They always know what they mean. [00:17:03] Speaker A: They know what they mean, they know what they want to say. I mean, Ed, have you got any sort of insight into that? Any observation of your practice? [00:17:10] Speaker D: Yeah, I think that it's so true that when a student is helped to get the language, they really want and they really need. They not only feel that the lesson has been more useful for them, but I think they do often remember that language a whole lot more effectively than the language that the teacher has decided is useful. The one occasion that springs to mind from my teaching career was a student who was about 17 who was able to say, my friend, he's not here today, but I can't really say why. And we explored that and I taught the phrase he had to see a man about a dog. [00:17:48] Speaker A: Okay. [00:17:48] Speaker D: A phrase which means it's signaling that you shouldn't, it's delicate, you shouldn't ask anything. He loved this so much that it actually became a part of his active vocabulary. And he would regularly say, oh, someone's so and so is not here today. They have to see. It was a lovely example of oh, wow. That has become part of their active vocabulary because it was emergent language which they wanted and needed and enjoyed. [00:18:14] Speaker C: What I really like about that is the playfulness with language. And I think that's the thing about emergent language, it allows you for that play with language that is often missing. You know, it can be quite sterile. In the course book, I had a nice example a while ago and it's this idea of giving choice to learners. And it was quite a high level class and there was a young Italian woman in her early 20s and we were talking about the UK and London and she said, the English people, they're just so cold. I said, oh, cold, okay, let's put it on the board. So actually I'm English and that would be. I would find that quite offensive if you said cold. So I elicited from the class, what else could you say? Any idea? [00:18:50] Speaker B: No. [00:18:50] Speaker C: Okay, well you could say reserved. And I explained pragmatically, reserved is less offensive. I said, which would you like to choose? And she said cold. So, you know, it's about choice. She didn't want to be offensive. You know, she didn't stay in the class for very long actually. [00:19:03] Speaker B: Well, it was her feelings, wasn't it? [00:19:05] Speaker C: Clearly wasn't. You know, you know, it wasn't a right. And it was, it was her feeling about it and she wanted to. Yeah, she did actually want to say no. That's what I mean. You know, I don't want you kind of hedged British version of it. [00:19:16] Speaker A: But isn't that fantastic that you couple of examples there of students really getting the language they want. I mean, I've got, if it's not, you know, impolite, I've got one as well which is that I used to teach at a summer school in Brighton and you know, sort of students from all over. And there was a student I remember from the uae, United Arab Emirates, lovely guy. And it was, it was, you know, 17 or 18 degrees, quite warm T shirt weather, we'd say in the uk. And he, you know, he was obviously sort of fighting it cold and he sort of wanted to, you know, we tried to sort of talk about that it was quite windy as well that day and he was trying to express this idea of that it's warm but it's cold because of the wind, you know. And I sort of, I didn't mean to, but I said, oh, wind chill factor. And his eyes lit up, you know, this word, this, this compound noun, wind chill factor. And he kind of repeated it a couple of times. And then I saw him over the successive couple of weeks and he was like, wind chill factor, wind chill factor. And I kid you not, after kind of three weeks he was shouting it down the corridor. Wind chill factor. Spaced repetition. It had such value for him. And it was, you know, I don't know what else he learned, but he certainly learned that because it came at just the right time. Is that emergent language? [00:20:29] Speaker B: Yes. Yeah, yeah, yeah. But it's also one of the theories underpinning it is this idea of just, they're learning it just at the right time and they're kind of primed to notice it. Primed to. Well, they're primed to notice what the teacher does and you know, they're kind of ready to use it. They want to use it and it sticks. It's very memorable. [00:20:50] Speaker A: What's so interesting about this? These incidents of spontaneous language. Why are you so fascinated? I mean, Richard, what is it about it that made you want to write a book for goodness sake? [00:21:01] Speaker C: Well, I suppose it's going back to the beginning of my teaching and after about a year of teaching I went off to Costa Rica and I went to a Spanish school and I was going to work on a project in Costa Rica. And my idea of teaching was very much a grammar based syllabus and teaching, a very structured approach to things. The Spanish class I went to was on this balcony looking at the rainforest in part of Costa Rica. And it was a small group, we sat outside and I didn't really want to do the fairy tale that was in the book with the past tenses, but I did want to ask the teacher in my pre intermediate Spanish about what's happening in Costa Rica. What's the situation here? To find out about it. And bit by bit, we work through, through together. It was very unstructured and very dogma, actually thinking back, but I didn't know what dogma was at the time. And it was only on coming back that I thought, well, actually, that was a really interesting way to learn things and actually maybe the way that I'd been approaching the class wasn't the only way. And actually it kind of put communication of ideas at the forefront for me. So I think that certainly changed my practice and certainly in the years that followed, bit by bit, I realized it was important. And then, you know, I learned the term emergent language. My colleague at the time was Nick Bilborough, who works the Hands Up Project, who does a lot of, you know, a lot of their work is based on emergent language. And I started to. Bit by bit it had a name, but I didn't. It was a bit of. It was a bit amorphous. I didn't really know exactly what it was. And it was only through time and actually becoming a teacher trainer and going to work with Danny and our other colleagues at IH that I actually started to start to question it. So it happened very organically. I'll hand over to you, Danny. [00:22:51] Speaker B: Well, no, the same thing. I think becoming a trainer then makes you think about, why am I doing this? And how do I say this to people who are becoming teachers themselves or wanting to do a course because they want to teach differently or they want some new skills. So it's. First you're sort of doing it and then you put a name to it and then you've got to describe it to someone else. That makes it kind of. That makes it feel like it's a thing you do. But I had that sort of exactly the same. Well, same experience of learning Spanish, but kind of the opposite. I can remember we. So this was in Argentina where we were running some courses and I was doing Spanish classes and we had to do presentations using comparatives and superlatives about the difference between your city and Buenos Aires. So I figured everyone was going to talk about the food and the weather especially. And I thought everyone's going to talk about the same thing. That's going to be boring. So I talked about Senor Musculo, Mr. Muscle, the. So it's a cleaning product? [00:24:01] Speaker A: Yes, of course. [00:24:02] Speaker B: So in uk, there are other cleaning products in uk. He's sort of weedy. He's got spectacles. Spectacles, he's got glasses. And so the cleaning product is what? You know, it's the strength of the product. Yeah. Does it in Argentina. He's a superhero. He's got a cape. He's really muscly. And it's. So that's what I did. And it was great because I was Luke looking in my thing about, okay, weak. And I was learning new words. And I still remember that. I still remember Debi yla meaning weak or weedy. And I remember the teacher. I remember some of the students laughing and thinking, I like this because it appealed to my sort of drama background. But then the teacher said, very good. But I wanted something about food and the weather. And I was really disappointed that, you know, I wanted to say what I wanted say. And I'd been kind of criticized for it. Very, very vivid. [00:24:59] Speaker C: There's really something in that kind of creativity that happens in class. And it's those moments that, you know, where emergent language happens when you. When you're being creative. And back to your point about being playful with language. [00:25:09] Speaker B: I wanted to play. Yeah, yeah, yeah. [00:25:11] Speaker C: And instead you were told not to. [00:25:12] Speaker A: Yeah, well, it's the creativity. It's the spontaneity. It's the unscripted, unplanned element. I mean, you know, those are. Those are interesting things. Those are potentially difficult things. [00:25:24] Speaker C: We never talk about improvisation. [00:25:25] Speaker B: We're very, very rarely. [00:25:26] Speaker C: I mean, Leo Van Leer does years ago, you know, and Adrian Underhill has done as well, and Alan Maley. They talk about a bit like the. What do they call the dark matter of elt? You know, the bits that we don't really talk about. But they're all the skills that you need as a teacher to be able to respond because you can't plan the lesson, as we said at the beginning, down to the, you know, the last tiny moment, the lesson, Even if you try. Even if you try, because you've got real people in front of you. [00:25:51] Speaker D: I'm sure we've all had the experience of teaching the same lesson back to back, and it being two entirely different things due to all of the contingencies which emerge as we teach. [00:26:01] Speaker B: Yeah, Ed. [00:26:02] Speaker A: I mean, these two guys have written a book on it. They're steep, deep in it. But, I mean, what is it that you think is important now about emergent language? And why should our audience be really interested in it? [00:26:13] Speaker D: What's a good lesson, I think, is at the heart of what teachers think when they go into a class. And to me, there's a real tension between. Is a good lesson when I teach everything that's in the book, in the lesson plan, or is A good lesson when I respond to the questions that my students have. And sometimes I want to find a way to make those two things work together. And that's, I think, really interesting. But I think there are also examples which Danny and Richard have mentioned where the context a teacher is in and the expectations of the learners they're working with will dictate what consists of a good lesson. So yeah, I think that's why it's important because essentially it boils down to good teaching and helping learners get better at what they're trying to do. [00:26:56] Speaker A: So one way to make your teaching more effective or potentially better is to take account of this, to let it into your lessons if you can. [00:27:04] Speaker C: Definitely. But I would like to go to Ed's point about what's appropriate methodology because, you know, what is acceptable in one place in the world is not going to be in another. So you do need to be mindful of that. I mean, if we're taking communication as our goal in terms of language teaching, then I really believe that emerging language has an important place there because you're responding to the learner's needs. Yeah, that's what I'd say about that. [00:27:28] Speaker B: Yeah. So if you're teaching towards a test or you have a syllabus to follow and there are set texts, then you know, you've obviously got, you're going to have less. Fewer moments for emergent language. But I think if you looked at people working in. I can remember when Dogme was sort of first being talked about a lot on the sort of conference circuit. IATeFL, people working in business training, they're kind of going, well, yeah, isn't this. Or one to one. Peter Wilberg, who wrote a really good book, I think it's just called one to one, would have just said, well, yes, isn't that what you do? So I think a one to one class and ESP type courses, a lot of ESOL where people coming from different countries into an English speaking environment for work, you know, to asylum seekers and refugees, for example, a lot of that, it's quite normal. It's part of the, part of a typical lesson. But I think if that's not your context, you obviously have to approach it with some caution. Okay, good, good. [00:28:39] Speaker C: Just so I can just come back to that point, say about eso. Absolutely. I think I really did a lot of that when I taught asylum seekers, refugees, migrant workers. But my last bit of research I done is with an ESOL teacher and she said now it's become very exam focused and again they're having the same issue, that it's very squeezed for timing and a lot of teachers are thinking, well, we don't have time for emergent language, we've got to prepare them for the exam. But actually, what do the students need? It's to function outside. So you got to think what's pedagogically sound as opposed to maybe the institution requires you to get so they can get their funding. And what she had found is ways to work with emergent language in class. Like, for example, they do a role play, the kind of thing they'd have to do in the exam, and that would yield lots of emergent language that then would be useful for the learners and, you know, work beyond simply just the exam as well. [00:29:32] Speaker A: So there are ways of incorporating it even into quite a sort of straight, tight syllabus. And maybe those ways are about looking for these moments and perhaps we kind of come back to that. But we're nudging our way towards classroom practice, which takes us to an interesting point, actually, and we're going to do a little experiment, gentlemen, if you don't mind, we're going to spring something on you. I say experiment and not test, so don't panic. But at this point, Ed, if I may, I'll hand over to you to sort of set this up. [00:30:01] Speaker D: Yeah, we thought it would be really lovely to have some practical examples captured emergent language. And so we. In a moment, we're going to show you some photographs of whiteboards that teachers and trainers, some of whom you know very well, have agreed to share with us. And we just love to see what goes through your minds as you look at these boards. Perhaps you have some idea of what might have happened in the class, or perhaps there's a particular technique that the practitioners used that you think is interesting, or it might just make you curious or emotional you of something. So the first. The first image is from Emma Mead Flynn. You work with her and know her very well, and she gave us permission to share this photo with you. [00:30:43] Speaker C: It looks very similar to the kind. I mean, it's a bit neater than my board. It's got much nicer writing than me. But my first impression, just looking at that, it's a working board. There's lots of. You can see the teaching that's been happening as the lesson's been continuing. This thing's crossed out and added [00:31:02] Speaker D: what jumps out at you. [00:31:04] Speaker B: It's very. [00:31:05] Speaker C: It's systematic. So you've got. She's drawing attention to different possibilities here, drawing attention to the form that the verb pattern that you have here. So syntagmatic relationships here. She's got different paradigmatic extension here as well. [00:31:23] Speaker A: Richie, could you just explain that? Paradigmatic, syntagmatic. Translate that for us. [00:31:29] Speaker C: Paradigmatic, different choices, sort of vertical extension it's sometimes called. Whereas syntagmatic would be. So you've got I verb I went for needs a preposition plus what comes after grammatically. So it's the syntax, the word order that we'd have the grammar basically and all the patterns here. So went plus ing, for example. [00:31:55] Speaker B: It's really lovely. What would be strange about this is how do you say what they've learned? Because it's kind of. They've learnt how to use went, which is actually huge. It's such a common word. I mean, I'm guessing there's a lot of past simple. By the end of the lesson, students will be able to use the. The past simple too. But they are saying so much. If this came from a text in a low level course book, the person in the text has probably done about three of these things and they've probably thrown in some other verbs as well. But actually she's really sort of honed in on this really important word. [00:32:36] Speaker C: It's interesting, I mean, because I've got a bit my own data actually, which is what did you do at the weekend? Which is the kind of Monday morning thing you start with. Sometimes you don't get a lot back, you know, fine here. Clearly the students are talking about what's happening, what they've done at the weekend. And she's working with what they're saying, maybe saying, that's interesting. Let's have a look at this here. And you can see she said. And what else can you say? No, you don't know. Okay, have a look at this. What preposition can you use here? So I can. Looking at that, I can see what the two teacher's doing in class. I can feel her working with what the learners are saying. [00:33:09] Speaker A: You see, I can kind of imagine our audience thinking, okay, so where's the emergent language? Is it all emergent or is it things like, for example, murals, which is a lovely kind of unusual word and not a low level word by any means. [00:33:24] Speaker C: So I'd say the whole lot's emergent, I'm guessing because what do you do at the weekend? The students probably chatted in pairs a little. So what do you tell me about what you did? I'm imagining as they're talking, she's building this up and she's identified Something that's useful, and that's one thing with emerging language is looking at what's useful for everybody here because we're all going to have a different. Collectively, what might be useful. [00:33:50] Speaker B: So if the lesson's completely springing from this question, then it's all emergent. If she's taught went before, then it's the next bit along. It's the to for and the ing. [00:34:05] Speaker C: There's these as well. [00:34:06] Speaker B: If this is revision, if she's taught these before, went to, went for, went ing, then it's might be this. This here. So it depends on where the students are at very often. [00:34:18] Speaker C: So what's the word you said? Mural. Was it? [00:34:20] Speaker A: Yeah, I mean. I mean, to me as a novice, it's sort of jumped out as maybe that's of a different level to maybe the other language. And perhaps that was something they were struggling to say or translate or. [00:34:29] Speaker C: Oh, yeah, it's a very specific. [00:34:30] Speaker B: What is it in Spanish? [00:34:32] Speaker C: Yeah, I'm not sure actually, but I'm really not sure. But I think that's definitely emergent because they're trying to explain on the wall and probably you can imagine there's some go. Is it a painting on the wall? Okay. It's got a specific name. It's that. Ah, yeah. [00:34:50] Speaker D: It's much more than a photograph of some language on the board. Richard, you've actually been able to piece together a sense of what the students were doing in this lesson based on what's accumulated on the board by the end. And we have a few more boards for you to look at. [00:35:03] Speaker B: I just want to say that thing about imagining the class. I do wonder if this poor student was quiet the whole interaction. I went nowhere. [00:35:14] Speaker C: Typical response from students, isn't it? What do you do at the weekend? [00:35:17] Speaker A: Nothing special. [00:35:17] Speaker B: Nothing special. [00:35:18] Speaker D: Let me show you another image that Emma Mead Flynn shared with us. And again, just anything that strikes you about this or anything that you wish to comment on or draw our attention to from an emergent language perspective. [00:35:31] Speaker A: It's beautifully laid out, isn't it? [00:35:32] Speaker B: Yeah, it's really good. [00:35:34] Speaker C: So I'm guessing this side. Perhaps. I'm not sure, but I'm thinking of the. [00:35:38] Speaker A: So that's the left. [00:35:38] Speaker C: You're pointing to the left. I'm pointing to here. Perhaps this is the target language. Do you think, Danny? Possibly. Or is it not? [00:35:45] Speaker B: I think I was going to. I was planning to because. Why does the person say that? I'm presuming that's a person in a course book. Yes, a set of. Teach a set of material. [00:35:56] Speaker C: So future in the past basically might have been the target language. But then over here, I'm guessing maybe as they're going through it, perhaps these are the things that are emerging that the learners might have gaps in their knowledge with or I kind of guess that that's. And we would actually probably suggest, and we did work with Ms. And we might have an unfair advantage here that there's a certain amount of shared practice, having trained together and given advice to trainees together that you know, part of the board you'll use for your target language and the way you're. The things that you've planned to have in your lesson. But you need to save space on the board where you can actually work with what emerges throughout the lesson as well. [00:36:33] Speaker B: Yeah. [00:36:33] Speaker D: Do you have your own preferred ways of using the space on the board, different color pens etc, etc? Is there a kind of best practice way of doing it or do you have your own preferred individual style? [00:36:46] Speaker B: I'm quite like this. I have a sort of word collocation chunk on one side and then I'm figuring this is going to be an interaction or grammar or function of language, longer sentence type, type thing really. But I'll sometimes I'll see that I've got. That I've made a little line there and there's more happening here color wise. I do tend to stick to black and blue mainly because I can't read yellow. I can't read green on the board anymore. [00:37:20] Speaker A: Oh, you're colourblind? [00:37:21] Speaker B: No, no, it's something that I presume has just come with my age and varifocals and stuff. So I can read the green she had there. But very often when trainees are working with green, I just. I cannot read what that says. [00:37:33] Speaker C: A lot of people have problems with green. [00:37:34] Speaker B: Yeah, yeah, yeah. [00:37:35] Speaker C: I mean I always say highlight with sort of red and green but don't write. [00:37:38] Speaker B: Don't write it. Yeah, certainly. [00:37:40] Speaker C: I mean I tend to put, you know, so the plain text I want in black and then often highlight Lexus that I want them to draw their attention to in blue and then I might highlight the phonology in, you know, in red. [00:37:53] Speaker D: That's what seems to have happened. [00:37:55] Speaker B: Yeah, yeah, I'm very. [00:37:56] Speaker A: Yeah, that sounds quite sophisticated and quite a lot to remember. And three pens in the pocket. But it's something to aspire to. [00:38:03] Speaker C: Well, I always mess it up, you know, and then eventually. Or a pen runs out and then. Yes, you know, so there is something systematic, I think in my thinking the reality of it Might not look like that, but what we have got are some pictures of students, not notebooks. And I mean I'm really messy, I'm left handed, I kind of, you know, I'm very squally on the board and I haven't got great handwriting. I have to concentrate and something I've always had to had feedback on when I've been observed, something I know I've always got to work on. To be clear, students go what does that say? [00:38:36] Speaker B: All the time in my classes. [00:38:38] Speaker C: But we've got, you know, some, some of our colleagues have really beautiful board work. I mean, I mean this is lovely and clear but I mean like it's almost like a work of art when you go in there, isn't it? And you think, gosh, I can never do that. But it's the same with students. You know, you have these people who are very, very neat and tidy and have beautiful notes and they will actually annotate things. So the kind of annotation that you do on the board, you can actually explain it to the students and encourage them to, to do the same thing with their notes as well so that it helps them when they're revising it. [00:39:06] Speaker B: I think another thing to remember, there could be five minute gaps between each bit going on there. So this could be at the end of a two hour lesson. [00:39:14] Speaker D: Let's take a look at another, another image. [00:39:15] Speaker B: This is fun. [00:39:17] Speaker D: This is from Sandy Millen and Sandy posted this on the now sadly defunct ELTPics photo sharing site on Flickr and she gave us permission to use this and told me that the context here is that she was working with A1 level teenagers. So that might give you some, some sense of what she chose to do and not to do. [00:39:40] Speaker B: So. [00:39:40] Speaker A: Pretty low level. [00:39:41] Speaker D: Pretty low level, yes. [00:39:42] Speaker A: Yeah. [00:39:46] Speaker D: I like the way that we're kind of showing different approaches to using the board, suggesting that there isn't just one fixed way and that this, this is a clearly a different type of lesson from the one we looked at previously. [00:40:01] Speaker C: So it's very focused on accuracy I think just, just very quick look. So it's correction here, correction here. There's something, some explanation of that particular word accuracy with phonology, I'm guessing with those two. Highlighting the preposition so quite form focused I'd say is my first. But if they're low level then that's obviously, you know what they're going to struggle with. [00:40:29] Speaker B: It looks like it's revision partly because of the score and were they describing things in pictures? [00:40:39] Speaker C: I don't know what P and E would stand for [00:40:43] Speaker B: E's got five. Oh, is it from P's in team? Yeah, yeah, yeah. [00:40:47] Speaker A: Whoever's in team P needs to up their game, I think. [00:40:49] Speaker B: Yes. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. Brilliant. [00:40:54] Speaker A: Ed, have you got any comments? Have you got another board for us? [00:40:56] Speaker D: Well, I was just curious to see what you thought about this. Like, for example, the spacing of the language here. I'm always struck by the efficiency of this kind of layout of a board. There's clearly, I think the teacher here, Sandy, probably had plans for the rest of the board as well. And maybe it was one of those lessons where that stays on the board and other stuff comes up on the write and is then erased as the lesson continues. [00:41:24] Speaker B: I wonder if this language is being recycled or elicited from different pictures. And they've got scores for something, so [00:41:34] Speaker C: it's got to come from somewhere. [00:41:35] Speaker D: Yeah, a mysterious one. [00:41:38] Speaker A: It's fantastic looking at people's whiteboards, isn't it? It's not something that we often get chance to do. I mean, we work as a team, we work in schools, but when you go in and you close the door, it's kind of you and them. And it's great to be able to kind of open it up and see these boards. I mean, have you got any other comments on sort of the importance of kind of, you know, showing your whiteboard getting filmed, you know, kind of, you know, will that help us identify opportunities for emergent language or how we're doing it already? [00:42:11] Speaker D: Maybe you could actually show another picture. While we're discussing discussing that question as [00:42:14] Speaker B: well, one of the things we suggest regularly to teachers who want to work on emergent language one is, well, it's filming and taking pictures of your board. Pictures of your board is a good place to start because it's kind of take a picture, take it home and think, okay, how could I have maybe organized this better? Or where could I have looked at chunks? Or is this a useful phrase? And I've got so many photos of boards. I mean, I've pretty much deleted most of them now, but over the years and it's, you know, it's taught me a lot about how I organize things. But filming was way more important to me. Sort of thinking about what am I doing? How am I? You know, I tend to really take a moment with emergent language and other teachers. It's quick and they move on much quicker than me. And I think that's obviously my style. So you learn a lot about yourself [00:43:14] Speaker A: by recording yourself, Richard, before We dig into this. I mean, have you got anything to say about sort of turning the camera on yourself or taking photos of your own? [00:43:23] Speaker B: What. [00:43:23] Speaker C: I'd just like to add to what Danny said, actually, because I think when you look at. When you take a picture of your board and look at it, it really gives you a sort of deeper insight into what the learners need. Need. But it also helps you reflect on how useful the language was that you gave the learners. Because there are times, I'll be completely honest, I've looked at what I put on the board and I think, how useful was that? How actually, when would you hear that, actually, was it a useful piece of language? Is that what the learners actually really needed or did they need something else? There's a nice example that doing this exact activity with Amelia Kirkland, who was the ESOL teacher I mentioned before, and she. She noticed that she gave the students they were doing something about in the cinema, and she. She said, oh, what. What's the place where they were asking, what's the place where you buy your food and drink at the cinema? And she couldn't think of the word in the spot. And I think she came up with, I don't know, kiosk or something, food counter or confection or something. And actually when she went away and looked at her board and what she'd given them, she thought, oh, actually what they wanted was some interactional language. They wanted to know, where can I buy? And it was only standing back from it and reflecting on it thinking, oh, well, that's my missed opportunity. That's what I need to go back and give the learners afterwards. So I think that kind of record can really help stimulate reflection. So it acts as an artifact that helps you think about what happened in your lesson and consider other options in terms of videoing. [00:44:47] Speaker D: For. [00:44:47] Speaker C: For me, you know, I've done it quite a lot. And I think, Daniel, when you were doing your project initially, some years ago, I remember watching myself teach horrible, you know, but as soon as you get over that initial, I'll never wear that shirt again. I look very fat in that. When you get over that and you start thinking, well, actually, what I'm doing there is quite good, you know, you can actually be honest about it. I said, why am I doing that? [00:45:11] Speaker B: Why am I doing that? [00:45:12] Speaker C: And why do I think that that's a good thing to do? Why would that be good practice or what's not good about? So you can start to reflect on those positive and negative things and it kind of helps you dig A bit deeper into some of the things you already know about in your practice, but can really illuminate things that you didn't know. [00:45:28] Speaker A: I like the idea that the way it's a potential step up, you know, you can start by taking a photo of your board. If you're a bit sort of, you know, self conscious, you don't like the idea of being filmed, you know, start [00:45:37] Speaker B: with always a good start and then [00:45:39] Speaker A: move on to the kind of, you [00:45:40] Speaker C: know, perhaps the other thing is deeper practice. If your students are happy with you obviously remember you've got to get permission, but. Audio RECORDING Even just a couple of minutes. This is from Steve Walsh's work on classroom interactional competence. You know, just take it, take a little snippet from a lesson, listen to it back. You don't even have to transcribe it, but think about maybe the kind of questions that you're asking or, you know, what is the interaction? Is it you talking a lot or is it you involving the learners in the lesson as well? [00:46:06] Speaker D: This last image is by Steve Nikodemski. [00:46:09] Speaker B: Can I quickly say something about this one? I think the other thing is not to be too hard on yourself or if you're training not to be hard on people, because there's a few things where it seems a little disorganized because you've got adapter and makeup and toiletries and nail. But you don't know what happened in the room where the students were going, oh, yeah, what's that? What? I wanted to bring one of these. Oh, adaptor. The teacher just wrote it there. But it may have been super, super clear. I just know I would like. I usually pack and then I would have the. So I'd want pack and the things to be collocated, as it were. But that. But the students could have been spending this whole lesson going, ah. And then a lot's happened because you've got going to went and go. So, yeah, the board doesn't look organised, but there's probably a lot of learning happening. [00:47:08] Speaker A: And there was probably only one colour pen in this school, right? [00:47:11] Speaker B: Yeah, but it's clear. I mean, that's the thing. A lot of students won't. I think a lot of students say that they find the colour distracting and [00:47:23] Speaker C: there's lots of linguistic information where the stress goes in the words as well. [00:47:27] Speaker B: I probably would have put those into sentries. So it's wear makeup and make up a story because I think it's very hard to learn something just by labelling it. [00:47:36] Speaker D: Do you feel Danny that you've become better at working with the board over the years. [00:47:40] Speaker B: Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. My writing is. I still get. Oh, what word is that? Because. It's because I get into it. [00:47:49] Speaker D: But looking at a photograph of your. Your board could be formative in the sense that you think, if I did this again, I think I'd arrange this in a different way or something like that. [00:47:57] Speaker B: Well, I'd write more carefully, for sure. Yeah, yeah, yeah. But then again, it's. That sort of thing is when you have a good lesson, there's a lot going on. So sometimes you can think that's a bad board as a story of a very interesting, rich lesson. And that's a beautiful board. [00:48:18] Speaker D: Thank you for talking about boards with us. I mean, I think we should make the point that it's not all about how you use them. [00:48:23] Speaker B: No, no, no, for sure, for sure. [00:48:26] Speaker A: Just in terms of sort of classroom practice, you know, great to see the whiteboards. You know, really good to hear the opportunities with emergent language. I'm sure there'll be some people sort of listening and watching who'll be thinking, wow, you know, I mean, I'd like to kind of start to explore this. I'd like to. To refer, reflect on my own practice. Do I do it already? I mean, what would you say to them? How would they, how would they start? [00:48:49] Speaker B: How. [00:48:49] Speaker A: I mean, they might feel? It's not for me, you know, I'm not experienced. You know, I'll just keep. Keep plugging through the coursebook. [00:48:58] Speaker C: Yeah, I suppose it's. Initially, it's, you know, they've identified that emergent language is something that they want to know more about. I'm guessing we're starting from there. So the thing to do, observe some colleagues teaching might be the easiest thing to do. Or if that feels a bit face threatening, then maybe do some team teaching with a colleague. You know, we've done that a lot at ih and I think I've learned a lot from that. Because you might plan a lesson together. You do the kind of lesson study bit together, and then you go in and you see how each other work with different things. And it kind of does demystify what you think other people do in the classroom. You know, when you're in the classroom, the next door, they're all kind of, you know, laughing and rolling in the. And you think, I'm a bit quiet here in my room. What's wrong with my class? And actually, when you see what other people are doing, it makes you feel a lot More empowered about what you do. And then you can pick up ideas from each other quite quickly when that fear is taken away. [00:49:48] Speaker B: I think, certainly for me, I think the other thing you learn is that course books aren't a sort of enemy of emergent language, because a lot of languages can come out of a lesson. With coursebooks, I think it's when you rigidly follow something that's more the problem. But when you video yourself, for example, you may find that actually your use of the coursebook is really good. [00:50:14] Speaker A: It's quite flexible. [00:50:15] Speaker B: Flexible. And what is stopping you working with the learner language is that you're not noticing it or you're repeating. A student says something and you're just repeating it back to them. And so it go back to what we did in the session this morning earlier today. Sorry. This idea of brainstorming what's happening in the picture, and a student says, a game. He said a game? Yes. What do you think? A festival. Okay. You know, you're actually not giving them any space to tell you why they think like that. So actually, I think the enemy of emergent language very often is the teacher not really responding, actually. And course books are full of really good questions like, what do you think is happening in this picture? What do you think this headline is going to be about? Why do you think those people in this text did that? But then it's the teachers who go, why do you think they did that? Okay, great. Now let's. You know, that's actually the problem. It's not really courses and plans. It's the rigid following or picking the easy answer, which is very often I'm comfortable knowing the answer to this gap fill. So I do a lot of gap [00:51:35] Speaker C: fills, but it's not meaningful because you're [00:51:38] Speaker B: not really listening to. [00:51:39] Speaker C: You don't really care what they're saying unless the answer correct. [00:51:44] Speaker B: Well, maybe not don't care, but I don't know what to do when I. I feel so much happier when I know what the answer's going to be. [00:51:51] Speaker A: Yes, yes. There's that sense that, you know, as a teacher, you're in control. You know, how the lesson's going to go. I mean, you know, without wanting to lose control completely. How can we kind of help teachers, practitioners sort of move away from that and encourage a little bit more spontaneity maybe? I mean, Ed, how do you balance the coursebook and, you know, looking for emergent language? [00:52:17] Speaker D: I think what Danny just said really struck a chord with me. The difference between really listening and just waiting And I think that for as long as my mind is on my lesson plan, and for as long as I'm thinking that a really well taught lesson is about ticking off everything on the lesson plan, and I won't really have the capacity to listen to my students, I'll be waiting for them to finish so that I can, with the best intentions, move on with my plan. And in doing so, as Danny pointed out, I'm missing an opportunity to attend to students. And I often found that there was a fear that I wouldn't know the answer. But in talking to students, I found that the teachers they liked the most were not the teachers who had all the answers, but were the teachers who listened to the questions at least and tried to answer them. And I think one of you said a great thing a teacher can do is to say, I don't know, but I'll get back to you on this, or perhaps open it up to the rest of the class. [00:53:14] Speaker B: If there is one thing to be critical of course books and emergent languages is to look at a unit or a series of units. And I, following on from Diana Freeman, not Diana Larson Freeman, but Diana Freeman, Diane Freeman, sorry, did a study probably about 15 years ago where she counted, but just counted the questions in course books and she ordered them by closed questions where the answer is known to open questions, where the answer is either going to be personal or is going to need some kind of evaluation. And in an elementary book, she found that something like 8, I think it was 89% of the questions in the whole of the book were closed questions. And I think there were 36, I think 12 units, four units per unit. And she'd worked out that students were only asked to offer an opinion once every two units. And she said that's blocking too much. You know, it's all target. And so being looking at a coursebook and just thinking, where could I maybe change a question? I think is very important. [00:54:26] Speaker A: That's a lovely start, actually, where you can sort of just tweak something to open it. [00:54:31] Speaker B: Especially when you have two reading tasks. Let's say you've got a true or false followed by a question with open answers. Get rid of one and make an open question. Which holiday would you like to go on? Who sounds like they had the worst holiday? What would you do in this situation? [00:54:52] Speaker C: It's a bit like the late, great Sir Ken Robinson who said that actually, children in school, basically, no wonder they're bored because we give them light clerical work to do gap filling and whatever else. Where's the creativity. And actually by changing a question to engage more higher order thinking skills actually is going to create much more conversation, therefore a chance to work with emergent language. And it doesn't have to be again, throwing the whole course book away, but it could be looking for that question after the reading where they've got to give some sort of personal response or some sort of judgment or opinion about it. That can be that moment where that you've set aside for emergent language. [00:55:31] Speaker A: And that's very doable, isn't it? I mean, this is not a big thing. It's, it's. And it doesn't seem kind of, you know, iconoclastic. Now there's a word. I mean, Ed, I mean, have you got any, you know, with your closeness to the classroom and you know, closeness to teachers, I mean, have you got any sort of idea about one thing they could do which would allow emergent language to kind of happen or. [00:55:55] Speaker D: Yeah, play the long game, I think would be my answer that the great thing about teaching is however badly a lesson goes, we always have a chance to come back and teach another lesson. And that I think a lot of what Richard and Danny have been talking about is about creating a kind of environment in which a certain type of learning and inquiry can happen and is valued. And I don't think that happens within 45 minutes. I think the foundations are laid and that as teachers we can be patient and also so be kind to ourselves as we try to make small changes. And I loved what you said, Danny, about emergent language moments in lessons as being a great way to move in the direction of opening up things which had previously been closed. [00:56:41] Speaker A: So if we make space for these moments, an emergent language happens in the lesson. I mean, I'm kind of thinking, okay, so where does it go from there? How do we capture it? How do we practice it? How do we test it? Because it's kind of unofficial stuff, isn't it? It's just kind of bubbling up. You know, they've got their course book to take home, but this is new. [00:57:04] Speaker C: The simplest thing you could do is to recycle it. And one easy way is the boards that we had there blank out, you know, after the learners have looked at it. Close your notebooks, don't look. Okay, Blank out some bits on the board. Okay. With your partner. What can you remember? A simple activity like that? Taking a picture of the board, then turning it into a worksheet the next day or some sort of game the next day. Maybe that's what was Happening a warmer. [00:57:27] Speaker B: I wondered how sort of Sandy's lesson. Yeah, I mean, Emma. A really nice thing Emma could do perhaps on the Friday of that week. Because I'm presuming that lesson happened on a Monday. Oh, this is the. What did you do with. Okay, we're going to have a quick game. Who can remember the most activities your colleagues did? And you could. Two teams and they've got to. One team's got to remember all that team and the other team's got to remember all that team. And you get points for each one. Maybe two points, one off if the grammar needs fixing. And so they're just recycling that language and doing it through a game. [00:58:08] Speaker C: It depends on the language, doesn't it? I mean, if the language lends itself to it, you know, it could be telling a story. Yeah, you get them to do some sort of creative storytelling with the Lexus that you. Or the grammar or whatever it is that you've looked at the day before. [00:58:20] Speaker B: Turn it into questions and interview each other. Yeah, yeah, great. [00:58:25] Speaker A: I mean, you two, are you three phenomenally experienced teachers, teacher trainers, you know, what's one other thing that we can say to maybe sort of practitioners who don't feel as experienced or potentially even don't feel that they've got L1 on their side? You know, there's all that kind of thing. I mean, how can you encourage people to sort of still go for it, still work with it, open the door to emergent language. [00:58:50] Speaker B: Any idea? I think it's kind of just to not look at it as this weird thing that you're probably not doing. Teachers probably spend ages in corridors outside classrooms with students and the students telling them something and they're just helping and saying what do you mean they're probably doing it a lot. [00:59:09] Speaker A: That's the wind chill factor. [00:59:10] Speaker B: Yes, exactly. Yeah. And probably doing it with each other occasionally. And so I talked in the LTOC session about the teacher saying, in my house, I'm the go to person for. How do I say this? A house of people whose first language wasn't English. And I think it's just you're constantly talking to people who. In this other language and kind of deciding what they're saying or thinking about how they could say it differently. All you've got to do is take the leap to I'm going to do it when I'm actually standing in front of the board rather than all the other places is I do it. [00:59:54] Speaker C: I think a key skill in that isn't that negotiation as well? Because sometimes if you're not sure what the learner's trying to say. Don't say, oh, you mean this. And actually it's not what they wanted to say. So you've really got to negotiate with the learner and check that that's what they want to say. And that can take a little while. It might take a quick bit of Googling as well. Oh, right. Okay. This might be looking at some pictures. Finally, we arrive on actually what the learner wanted to say. I think that's an important thing to consider. [01:00:21] Speaker B: Learning that. What do you mean? Is a really, really good classroom question as a teacher. As a teacher is hugely powerful and actually what I've had to train myself to do is say, what do you mean? When I do know, but I suspect the other people in the room probably don't because I've spent 30 years surrounded by people with their first language accent, and I pretty much know what they're saying. [01:00:48] Speaker C: Now there's an opportunity that'd be useful for everybody here. [01:00:52] Speaker B: Yeah, yeah, yeah, absolutely. [01:00:54] Speaker C: Great. [01:00:55] Speaker A: Ed, have you got any insights? Having listened? [01:00:58] Speaker D: Yeah, I do. And I have to confess that I think that if I could go back in time and talk to my younger teaching self, it would be, why are you writing this on the board now? Is this for your own sake or is it for the sake of the students? And I think that I very often made the mistake of writing stuff on the board because I thought it looked good up there and I thought it belonged there and I thought a colleague might see it up there. Ed's taught a great lesson there, whereas everything you've said about emergent language is about it coming from an authentic need that has arisen out of communication. And so, yeah, I think I would be keen to remind myself that if I feel that it's going on the board, then it should be helping the students to learn something which has been identified by them as worthy of being [01:01:50] Speaker B: taught or explained or learned just before we finish. [01:01:54] Speaker A: I mean, can this be seen in the context of sort of allowing something to be a bit more learner led, a bit more democratic? I mean, that's something which I think a lot of teachers still struggle with. This idea that, you know, you're the sage on the stage, you have the answers, you know, you can't be seen to not have control, but in actual fact, ceding a bit of that control to the learners has very productive results. [01:02:17] Speaker B: Is that. Absolutely. I think for in terms of engagement and motivation, agency, I mean, these are uncontroversial areas of what makes what makes a successful learner. And so working with what students want to say is a huge part of making those. Putting those absolutely forefront to your teaching. So, yeah, and it's all. And it's being present in the room. You know, there's a teacher and a set of students. The course book is the outlier, actually, because it's the only one where the creator of it isn't actually there. So what's happening between you is just vital. And I think the students feel seen and heard by you, working with what they're trying to say, rather than you trying to make them do something that maybe they aren't ready for or don't really see the need for. [01:03:13] Speaker C: How we view language learning as well, is it just basically learning all the tenses and learning lists of vocabulary, or is it learning to play the game of language? That's what Van Lee talks about, isn't it? Framing it like that? I think, well, you've got to actually play the game and pick up the rules as you go along. And if you think about that as a kind of overarching metaphor, then bit by bit you're picking up the bits that you need in order to be able to do it. [01:03:37] Speaker A: That's a really affirming and empowering way, I think, to sort of view emergent language, which is fantastic. It's been a wonderful conversation. Gentlemen, thank you so much for giving us so much of your time, insight and experience. And I think the only thing remains is we know what my tattoo is, we know what yours is. We know what yours is. Ed, what are you gonna have? [01:04:01] Speaker D: It will emerge. [01:04:05] Speaker A: Wonderful, gentlemen, thank you so much. It's been a pleasure, an absolute delight. A big thank you to Danny, Richard and Ed for sharing their insights, experience and thoughtful reflections on the topic. I hope we've lifted the lid on a topic that you may or may not have realised you're working with every day in the classroom. Personally, I really enjoyed watching them break down the whiteboard examples, picking apart what might have happened in real lessons. [01:04:34] Speaker B: Thanks for. [01:04:35] Speaker A: For listening to Talking elt. We hope this episode sparks new ways of thinking about language learning. Don't forget to like and subscribe.