Eighth week in my trainee placement

This week has been short too, as we had San Sebastian in the middle. I have been reflecting on my school’s policy regarding English teachers, who have to pretend they are native, and also on this trainee placement compared to the previous two.

The week has been intense, especially because after Christmas we decided that I would take over the pre-primary teacher in one 4-year-old class and one 5-year-old class. So now she watches and I perform, and we discuss afterwards. Compared to my last school placement, when I took the teacher’s place everyday, this time is different, because I hardly have any time to plan and prepare with the teacher. Last year the teacher and I went to school 45 minutes before lessons started (she used to do that, and I joined her), so we had plenty of time to plan the day and discuss. I got more directions as to how to do things. This year, we only have time for short directions on our way to class, because the teacher has other lessons before, and so do I. So, this placement is giving me a chance to work on improvising. Of course, I have read the teacher’s guide, so I know the description of each activity in the unit, but most of the times I don’t get to see how my teacher performs it before I do. This has some pros and some cons, but I think it is good learning. I know that the teacher is there, and that she will step in if she sees anything too wrong, so I feel ok with it. The experience is close to being sent to a school to take over a teacher who is on leave, which is the main work experience I am likely to get once I finish my studies.

One of the days I came out thinking that we did a fantastic lesson; my storytelling was good, children were really into it and participating a lot… Other days I saw many things that needed to be improved, mainly planning the activity itself.

Last week I had a meeting with my university supervisor for the school placement, and he suggested I wrote more about general topics, like diversity etc. So far, I have been writing about those aspects more closely related to English teaching and learning, although I have mentioned that at the end of the day, the questions that interest me the general ones: how do you create a positive learning atmosphere? what should you do with those who feel less confident? Most of the times, I have dealt with those topics in my blog, because for some strange reason I feel like those thoughts belong there, and this diary is more related to teaching English.

From what I have seen so far, English lessons can be hard for those who I called the “gourmets of education”, especially due to aspects linked with the management of time. English lessons in pre-primary last 30 minutes. In primary they are a bit longer, 45 minutes, but since we walk up to collect each group in their regular classroom, and take them back there once we finish, they end up lasting 30-35 minutes too. English teachers run on a very tight schedule. For example, in pre-primary, the material we use is planned for 45 minute lessons, and since we only have 30, we have to “compress” activities a little. If a child has a bad day and poses “problems”, often they are asked to leave the classroom. I have also seen that not all children get the highest expectations from their teacher. Am I happy with that? No. Do I have an alternative? Being just a student, I can’t claim to have a solution, but I am determined to try something else if I ever get the chance to be a “real” teacher. You can’t just give up without even trying. That attitude doesn’t match the ideal teacher I have in my head.

English classes have an extra source of diversity, compared to regular lessons, as many students attend English lessons outside school. I think we should take more advantage of that than we do, and take this information into account when we set groups in the English classroom. That way, we could make sure we apply heterogeneous grouping and encourage cooperative learning, using peer tutoring as one of the main tools to develop lessons. There is a lot to do in that area, from what I am seeing in my placement.

Pretending to be a native teacher in the EFL classroom

English teachers at the school where I am having my trainee placement pretend to be native English speakers. My school supervisor told me about it when we first met last summer. When she told me, I didn't think anything about it. Later on, when the new academic year started, we were told by some of our teachers in the Foreign Language Learning and Teaching Minor that that wasn't a good policy, mainly because it set a bad example regarding multilingualism, as students would have a monolingual English teacher, who apparently made no effort to learn other languages, while they had to learn English.

On December 3rd, when we celebrate the day of Basque language and culture, children put up a show at school; some classes sang a song, others made cookies etc. The 4th graders whose lessons I have been attending all along sang a well known song that challenges the listener to speak Basque, and starts saying something like "We speak Basque, why don't you join us?". Well, that morning, when the teacher and myself went to pick them up and take them to the English classroom downstairs, children sang the song pointing at us, and they had every reason to do so too. So, yes, pretending to be a native English teacher who doesn't speak Basque in a Basque school is not a good idea.

There are even more drawbacks to this policy. For instance, it makes it impossible to share with the students the struggles the teacher went through to learn English, which is something that helps create a good atmosphere and is encouraging for students. Equally, the teacher won't be able to share how they overcame those hurdles and show how far they got, setting an example. On the other hand, raising metalinguistic awareness pointing out similarities and differences between English and the students' L1 or L2 is prevented also. And, then, it creates awkward situations, where the English teacher can't speak with any student's parents in front of them, unless they do it in English, nor can they speak with the rest of the school staff in any other language but English. Finally, if the English teacher gets caught speaking Basque or Spanish students will feel cheated at and a bit stupid for having believed the teacher, which won't help create a relationship based on trust and respect.

The English teacher should be able to make students understand and accept that the English lesson and/or classroom is a place and time for English only, without cheating and lying.

Seventh week in my school placement

This week is being quite different from the previous ones.

Firstly, I learnt the stories for the two pre-primary grades, HH4 (Don’t cry) and HH5 (The hamster), and I have started performing them in class. The first I did was the hamster, and it was alright, although I had a few mistakes; I didn’t know that this time I had to say the dialogues in such a way that students would be able to repeat them after me, so I didn’t leave enough space for them to talk, and when the little boy went to the pet shop to buy the hamster, I forgot to play the part when he pays for it! Other than that, it was ok.

The next day I told the HH4 story, and this time I did leave time for them to repeat the dialogues, although they didn’t repeat much. They were quite engaged and followed the story with interest, so I was happy. I also did the finger puppet dialogues we usually so as an opening and closing routine for each lesson, but I do those quite often, so that wasn’t much of a novelty. I also went to an HH4 group that I had never been with before to tell them the story, invited by my supervisor in the school, which was great. She told me that stories come out better as you practise, and she was absolutely right.

Since I was feeling more confident and freer to take active part, I proposed to my supervisor (the one that teaches only in pre-primary) to change slightly the opening puppet dialogue where a child asks for permission to go to the toilet. As we have done it so far, the student wants a wee, but since the hamster’s story has introduced the concept of poo (the hamster poos around the house), we changed the dialogue so the student would say he/she wants to poo.

Secondly, yesterday I took over my supervisor in the HH4 lesson, as she had to go out. I found out just in the morning that I would be doing the lesson on my own, so there wasn’t time for any preparation, but it was ok. I just needed to do the opening and closing rituals, which I know by heart by now, and run an activity where children had to draw the heads of the two characters of the story, cut them, fold them and glue them to make two puppets. They did similar puppets in the previous story, so they knew pretty much what to do.

As usual, the most difficult part was to manage the group. I took advantage of them being peacefully sitting in a circle when I arrived, as their “regular” teacher was still around, and I started straight away with the opening ritual. I find that leaving no time for children to be idle while they are sitting in the circle is a good idea, because otherwise they start to look for something to do which seems interesting to them, and that usually goes against the teacher’s interest. After the opening finger puppet dialogue, I introduced the activity, and I am happy of the way I did that too, as I got a couple of them to produce some output as well, so it was ok. I did make a mistake, though: I didn’t stress that they had to draw the heads first, then fold the paper, then cut, and then glue.  As a result, when I gave out the printed sheet to each student and they went to their desks, some of them started cutting first, and once they were concentrated on their activity it was hard for me to get their attention and explain that it was drawing first, and cutting afterwards. I should have made sure that all instructions were given before handing out the sheets. It wasn’t that bad, because it didn’t really matter that much if they cut them first, as we were going to have time to finish them that day, but it is something to bear in mind for the next time. Giving clear instructions seems very easy and straightforward, but it isn’t, for me at least.

Another little problem that arose during the lesson, which was entirely caused by my lack of good planning, was that some children finished much earlier than others making their puppets, and I had no other activity to offer them. I couldn’t ask them to sit in the circle still for another ten minutes while others finished, so I let them wander in the classroom. They engaged in very positive activities, such as taking the puzzles out and doing them, but when the rest finished and I wanted them to sit back in the circle to do the closing routine, of course, they didn’t want to, and I don’t blame them. Nothing too bad happened; just one little girl who got angry and refused to sit with the rest of us for the closing finger puppet dialogue. It didn’t worry me, because she does very well, so not taking part in the puppet dialogue once was not going to harm her at all, but it made me think about the incident afterwards.

I would need to have an alternative activity to offer to children who finish activities early, so they have something else to do. Then again, I thought that it would be a good idea to take advantage of the skills of those who finish first to teach their peers, so that was something that I could do the next time. My supervisor has just told me that that is something she does, as well as playing the song that goes along with the story and asking them to dance freely while they listen to it.

So, those were the main learnings that I got out of yesterday’s experience.

Finally, I came to the conclusion that it was the right moment to change my schedule. When I first started the school placement, I had in mind to change the schedule after Christmas, so I could concentrate on some grades only, and take more active part in the lessons. Seeing that I am taking more active part in the pre-primary lessons now, I have proposed to both of my school supervisors to stop attending the 1st and 2nd primary classes, and concentrate on the two pre-primary grades, plus primary 4th. That way, I will be able to take part in the same lesson with different groups of pre-primary, so I can watch how my supervisor does it and then do it myself with another group. They have both accepted, so from next week on, I will start with the new timetable.

I also plan on asking my pre-primary supervisor to let me lead all the lessons in the two HH4 and HH5 groups that I have been following since the beginning. It is much easier to lead the pre-primary lessons than the primary lessons without knowing the lesson-plan in depth, because their structure is much simpler and stays the same from one unit to the next, while primary lessons are more diverse in their contents, and I couldn’t take over the teacher without very thorough explanations beforehand, for which we have no time, unfortunately.

Well, since I have gone long enough for this week, I will leave the topic I want to build upon for next week.

Sixth week of my school placement

This first week of the second term is very short, as it started on a Wednesday. I guess that is good for all of us, teachers, students and trainees, because it will give us the chance to enjoy a soft landing into the new year, as it were.

I was curious to see if the English teachers in my school intended to start with the regular contents straight away, or they planned to have a first transitional lesson. Both of them told me that they were going to continue with the usual lessons for several reasons: in pre-primary, children lack the communication skills required to talk in English about their holidays; in primary, they had plenty of days before Christmas when they did other activities and, besides, they already talk about Christmas in their regular classrooms, so the teacher sees no point in repeating the same conversations in the English lesson.

I also think that it is good to enter into full school-mode as soon as possible once the holidays are over. Maybe you can have a special warmer at the beginning, but other than that, going back to a known routine helps us all to focus.

This week we started with the new stories in LH1 and HH4. I loved the way the teacher performed the LH1 story with all students in a semicircle dramatizing it at the same time. They enjoyed it a lot, and the teacher did it very well, using gestures, intonation and speaking very clearly.

Having a chance to see how stories are first told has made me realise that it is hard for the teacher, who needs to memorise the exact words of a quite long narration. It is all right for a teacher who holds a permanent position, because it will be challenging on the first year, but if you are a teacher who just arrived on that day to school to take over a teacher who is on leave, it seems impossible to be able to follow the lesson as it has been designed. That is a great problem I see in this method, and there is no easy way around. I would like to build up on this topic next week, as I feel that it might have some negative side-effects for the teacher.

Things I like from several foreign language teaching methods

The review we did last week on the ten methods and approaches for learning and teaching languages we have been working on along the term gave me the perfect chance to pick concepts and ideas I like the most from each. As Diane Larsen-Freeman states in her book titled Techniques and Principles in Language Teaching, we don't need to agree with every principle of a certain method; we could just take some techniques or principles linked with it which we feel that fit into the idea of language teaching we are trying to build during this Minor.

So, for now, I would say that these are the things I have found attractive and useful in each method:

• Grammar translation method: I liked the focus on culture and literature linked with the target language. I also think that working on synonyms and antonyms could be useful in some situations, because as we have learned in psycho-motricity, the notion of contrast is a powerful resource for learning, and synonyms and antonyms are about similarity and contrast in language.
• Audio-lingual method: I liked the fact that it works mainly on listening and speaking skills at the beginning. I also like the importance given to input quality, and the fact that errors are corrected immediately. The use of minimal pairs can be useful too, as it focuses on contrast and can help learners become aware of phonemes in the target language which might be hard to discriminate. The fact that students have an active role, even though the interaction is teacher-directed, is a plus too.
• Silent way: I find the notion of silence as a teaching tool very interesting, because it draws our attention to the interaction pattern and the need to weight carefully when the teacher should speak. Thinking of ways to be an active teacher using resources other that speaking is challenging too. The fact that students are encouraged to be autonomous learners is also interesting. I also like the idea of students working cooperatively and becoming highly involved in the activities. I find linking language learning to problem solving, and seeing it as a guided discovery very interesting too.
• Suggestopedia: The fact that it takes into account the role of students' feeling in the learning process is one of the main points I like. Therefore, creating a nice atmosphere will improve learning. I also liked the use of direct and indirect positive suggestions, and the fact that we can take advantage of peripheral learning. Adopting a new identity and singing songs as tools to loosen up and reach a state in which we will be more open to learning is also attractive.
• Community language learning: I like the fact that the role of the teacher evolves along the learning process in a way which resembles scaffolding. I also like the importance given to psychology, the active role of learners and the focus on building a community of learners who will support each other. Learning in a laid back atmosphere, through natural conversations which follow learners' interests is also an interesting idea. Enabling learners to produce right from the beginning can also be a very good way to improve motivation and, obviously, working in small groups would be ideal too.
• Total physical response: I like very much the notion of enjoying while we learn and the fact that the learners starts to produce when they feel ready for it. Regarding non-verbal responds done with body movements as a way of production will also be encouraging for learners. Besides, learning through movement and action fits very well with the way children learn, especially in pre-primary.
• Communicative approach: I like that fact that it adds more competences to the grammatical competence taken into account by the traditional methods mentioned so far (sociolinguistic, strategic and discourse competences). Placing learners in real life situations where language becomes the tool to solve a problem is also very interesting. The fact that activities need to be meaningful for learners, and that both teacher's goals and students' goals need to be taken into account is also important. The focus on interaction among students, using authentic materials, games and role play are powerful ideas too.
• Natural way: I like the focus on everyday life vocabulary and situations, the stress on having a nice atmosphere, the notion of i+1 (input a bit above of what the learner has already achieved), and the use of realia, gestures, total physical response, games, stories and songs. Since it is based on the way we naturally learn language, it can be very appropriate for pre-primary, bearing in mind that we will by no means have the amount of exposure needed to learn language using this method only.
• Process programme (task based learning), and CLIL: setting real life situations which students might encounter in life, where a natural context for language use is provided sounds like the right thing to do. Language becomes the tool to deal with the situation, in a problem-solving context. I also like very much the idea of focusing on the process, instead of the final outcome. Placing the focus on students, having tasks which are meaningful for learners, transcending the classroom walls and working on a topic or project for several weeks are also very interesting ideas in my opinion. The notion of acquiring language at the same time as we build knowledge on diverse topics fits in very well with the way teaching and learning are approached in pre-primary, so it is very useful.

Friends or foes?

Being placed together with primary education students in the Minor is a great opportunity to learn new things, no doubt. It gives you the chance to see how others see education, their aims, their ways of doing. I have the feeling that us, pre-primary education students, are more homogeneous that our primary education classmates. Maybe it is just because we are much less, so there isn't a chance for much diversity among us. We share similar values and approaches to education.

I guess there could be a more polite way to put it, but since this is mainly for myself to read, I will be quite blunt: us, pre-primary education students, believe that many of our primary education classmates act in favour of the traditional school in general. We are beginning to repeat the pattern we have experienced in our previous in-school trainings: primary teachers think that children are not "prepared enough" when they finish pre-primary, and pre-primary teachers feel that primary teachers are only concerned about contents.

One of my group mates in the mini-lesson we have recently prepared explained it very clearly: we should have HH6, HH7, HH8... instead of LH1, LH2, LH3..., meaning that the ways of doing and the principles of pre-primary should be fed into primary education (taking into account the developmental differences among children in both stages, of course). I have the feeling that the traditional school has managed to survive in primary and secondary education, while it has been wiped out in pre-primary and university. But this is just a feeling which could well be due to my prejudice, and being as we are together, it would be great if we could discuss this openly.

More lesson planning

Last Friday we continued with our lesson planning. First, we watched a video of two former students who brought children (now, that is real realia!) to their lesson presentation. Besides, it was a very interesting presentation, because they showed several English children's games. Apparently, these students listened to their classmates' concerns on how little they knew about games to use at school, in the playground during break time, so they organised a lesson around that topic. Now, that is a really nice thing to do for your classmates (and yourself).

The video also served as an introduction to what our presentations will be like at the end of the year, after we come back from our in-school training period, when we will also have real children. That will be great, because we will be able to see with our own eyes if our ideas work or not. I can't wait!

Oh, and I already have a guinea-pig volunteer; yesterday afternoon I saw my 6-year-old niece, and she showed me her new classroom's windows from the outside (she just started primary in a different location, but in the same school). So, I told her I might ask her teacher for permission to come one day (I did my two in-school trainings at her school), and then she remembered she came to university last year, when our psycho-motricity teacher gave us the chance to bring our in-school training class to university. She wasn't in my class, but since I knew she would love to come, I asked the teachers and herself, and she came along with "my" class. Well, yesterday she said that she would like to come to my "school" again, and that she is going to ask her teacher if they can come. Obviously, I told her that I also needed to ask my teachers for permission. So, if we happen to be short on primary first children, I have a very enthusiastic volunteer willing to recruit her class!

Lesson planning

Last Thursday we devoted the lesson to our next week's mini-lessons. First, our teacher showed us some examples of lesson planning from previous years, so we could have a model of what we are supposed to do (yes, we also receive modelling as part of the scaffolding of our learning!).We also watched pictures and videos of past presentations, which were very interesting.

Our teacher reminded us that a collection of activities is not a lesson (horror faces in the audience), she advised us to go from less demanding (both linguistically and cognitively) to more demanding activities within the lesson, to make sure all activities are connected, and to make sure that all activities pursue relevant aims. I think that was the point where we all thought "Gee, shouldn't we have started from here, instead of from designing our activities like we have been doing during the week?". Well, nothing to worry about! It doesn't necessarily have to be done bottom to top, or top to bottom, as long as you make sure you go back and forth from teaching objectives to tasks to be performed by students a few times during your lesson preparation process. Just like in the learning process, some prefer to go from the detail to the big picture, and some others go from broad concepts to concrete aspects. Personally, I need to make sure I go back and forth a few times, but I am flexible as to the starting point. Of course, one needs to bear in mind that young children go from concrete experience to global concepts.

After that introduction by our teacher, we continued designing our activities. In our case, we decided that since we were only two days away from our presentation, we would not make any dramatic changes, and in a quick assessment we reached the conclusion that we were not that far away from what would be asked from us. So, we continued writing the central column of the lesson planning chart, that is, the description of our tasks and procedures.

Multilingual education in the Basque Autonomous Community

1. Introduction
The Basque country is currently facing an important challenge: the transition from bilingual education to multilingualism. Previous learnings from the development of the bilingual education system, which started in the 1960’s, will prove useful to build a new framework for the introduction of foreign language learning while ensuring that Basque, a minority language, is maintained and its situation improved.

This document sums up the evolution of bilingual education in the Basque Autonomous Community (BAC), briefly mentions the main resources that the Basque Government offers in order to support the system, summarises the projects and plans for multilingual education that have emerged in the last years, and outlines the main findings of research conducted on the subject.

2. Bilingual education and its evolution
Compulsory education in the BAC is divided into primary education (ages 6 to 12) and secondary education (ages 12 to 16). The early years stage (ages 2 to 6) is not compulsory, although most children attend school or nurseries at those ages. Further education (ages 16 to 18) is offered too. There are state-funded schools and fee-paying private schools in the BAC, and each account for approximately 50% of the total amount of students (Zalbide & Cenoz, 2008, p. 7).

In the 1960’s, during Franco’s regime, several private schools (“ikastolak”) were the starting point of Basque education. Although they were not recognised as official schools at first, their development forced the dictatorial regime to accept them. With the return of democracy, in 1979 Basque gained the official language status in the BAC, together with Spanish (Cenoz & Etxague, 2011, p. 34; Elorza, 2013, pp. 2–3; Gardner & Zalbide, 2005, pp. 56–57; Zalbide & Cenoz, 2008, pp. 7–8).

The Law for the Standardisation of the Use of Basque (1982) and its development through the Decree for Education (1983) set that both Basque and Spanish would be compulsory units in all schools in order to guarantee the possibility of having acquired both at the end of compulsory education, and established three schooling models (A, B and D) from which families could choose. The A model is a Spanish-medium model where Basque is taught as a second language for 3 to 5 hours a week, in the B model each of the two languages is used during approximately half of the school time, and in the D model Basque is the language of instruction and Spanish is taught as a subject for 3 to 5 hours a week (Cenoz & Etxague, 2011, pp. 34–35; Elorza, 2013, pp. 5–6; Gardner & Zalbide, 2005, pp. 58–59; Zalbide & Cenoz, 2008, pp. 8–9).

The 1983 Decree ceased to be in effect after the 1993 Basque Schooling Law was passed, which maintained the three models and gave the “ikastolak” the chance to either integrate into the public education system or in the private sector (Gardner & Zalbide, 2005, p. 59).

The D model has increasingly been chosen by families since the bilingual models were established, growing from 25% in the eighties to 80-90% nowadays (Cenoz & Etxague, 2011, p. 35; Elorza, 2013, p. 13; Zalbide & Cenoz, 2008, pp. 10–11). This has resulted in a considerable increase in the number of bilinguals in the BAC, growing from 528 521 in 1991 to 714 136 in 2001 (Elorza, 2013, p. 16).

The bilingual education system had to face several challenges from the beginning (Gorter, Zenotz, Etxague, & Cenoz, 2014, pp. 210–211; Zalbide & Cenoz, 2008, pp. 11–16), such as improving teachers’ proficiency in Basque, developing materials in Basque or the standardisation of Basque. Although a great deal has been done in those fields, the improvement of the use of the language and its quality remain as important goals still to be reached (Gardner & Zalbide, 2005, pp. 65–69). There is also growing debate on the adequacy of the three bilingual models in the light of the evolution that has been outlined here and new challenges brought by the introduction of a third (or fourth) language in schools (Gorter et al., 2014, pp. 211–214; Zalbide & Cenoz, 2008, pp. 16–19) due to the spread of English as a lingua franca (Jessner & Cenoz, 2007, pp. 156–157).

3. Services and resources offered by the Basque Government
Regarding material resources, besides developing school facilities, the Basque Government has given support to develop terminology (standardisation of Basque), offered grants to teachers so they could produce materials, subsidised the printing and translating costs (EIMA), controlled the quality of materials, catalogued them and awarded best practices (Elorza, 2013, pp. 7–11; Gardner & Zalbide, 2005, p. 59).

The improvement of teachers’ proficiency in Basque has been achieved through training programmes (IRALE) where teachers could benefit from a full-time paid leave in order to improve their linguistic skills. Those schools that chose to also received training and support to evolve from the A model to the D model (Gardner & Zalbide, 2005, pp. 59–60).

The Basque Government also issues guidelines regarding pedagogical, curricular and organisational aspects such as grouping children according to their language skills in Basque and Spanish, the choice of subjects to be taught in each language in the B model, as well as appropriate teaching methodologies (Gardner & Zalbide, 2005, pp. 61–63). Teachers at state-funded schools have access to training programmes (PREST GARA) and receive support from regional centres (BERRITZEGUNEAK) in order to improve their teaching skills (Elorza, 2013, pp. 7–10), whereas fee-paying private schools have their own consultants (Cenoz & Etxague, 2011, p. 41).

There are also programmes to promote the use of Basque (NOLEGA) and the Basque Institute for Research and Assessment in Education (ISEI-IVEI) is involved in the development and monitoring of the Basque education system (Elorza, 2013, p. 7).

4. Current projects and plans for multilingual education
The bilingual education system set up in the eighties has evolved into a multilingual system at the beginning of the 21st century. Three main trends have been identified in terms of the improvement of the use of English in the curriculum (Cenoz & Etxague, 2011, p. 36): early learning in pre-primary, the use of the Content and Language Integrated Learning (CLIL) approach, and the use of English as an additional language of instruction.

State-funded schools and private fee-paying schools have developed several projects and plans which follow the three main trends mentioned above. Basque-medium private schools, “ikastolak”, developed the Eleanitz project; Christian private schools, “kristau eskola”, developed the Aniztu programme, and the Basque Government established a trilingual education framework (HMH-MET) which was recently changed into the Heziberri 2020 framework.

Eleanitz is the multilingual school model for “ikastolak”. It introduced English as L3 at the age of four within a global strategy (School Language Project) for the development of languages during compulsory education, based on a communicative approach to language learning and a CLIL perspective (Elorza & Muñoa, 2008, pp. 87–89). Therefore, and integrated curriculum is designed for all languages to be learned at school, taking into account that both common general skills as well as skills for specific languages will need to be acquired (Elorza & Muñoa, 2008, pp. 91–92). Basque is regarded as the main language in school and sociocultural factors are taken into account to give a different weight to each language (Elorza & Muñoa, 2008, pp. 92–93).

Aniztu has mainly focused on teacher training in order to develop their linguistic skills in English and the Teaching Assistant in the Basque Country (TABC) programme, which introduces native English speakers in the classrooms to provide high quality input (‘Kristau Eskola. Pedagogia proiektua’, n.d.).

State-funded schools had a multilingual programme before the academic year 2010-2011, with early English learning starting at age 4 (INGLEGOIZ) using DIP, DIP, DIP materials (‘Foreign language teaching in the Basque Schools’, n.d.), and a CLIL approach in primary (INEBI) and secondary (BHINEBI) education (Eusko Jaurlaritza, 2011, pp. 13–15; Vázquez, 2012). This eventually led to the trilingual education experimental process established in 2010-2011 (Eusko Jaurlaritza, 2011), which has recently been changed into the Heziberri 2020 framework (Eusko Jaurlaritza, 2014).

5. Results of multilingual experimental programmes
On general terms, there is increasing evidence supporting that bilingualism has a positive effect on third language acquisition and that the introduction of English has no negative effects on the development of Basque, Spanish and content learning (Cenoz & Etxague, 2011, pp. 42–43; Jessner & Cenoz, 2007, pp. 162–164).

Moreover, Basque proficiency is significantly higher among those students in the D model, whereas the language of instruction has no significant effect on the proficiency in Spanish. D model students also score higher on English than students in the A or B models (Gorter et al., 2014, pp. 214–216).

Experimental results of the Eleanitz project have shown no significant differences among students who had undergone the project and others who had not, regarding their skills in Basque and Spanish, as well as their cognitive development (Elorza & Muñoa, 2008, p. 93; Lasagabaster Herrarte, 2011, p. 96). Research outcomes also suggest that early exposure to English also has a positive impact on English proficiency (Lasagabaster Herrarte, 2011, pp. 96–97).

6. References
Cenoz, J., & Etxague, X. (2011). Third language learning and trilingual education in the Basque Country. In S. Björklund & I. Bangma, Trilingual primary education in Europe: some developments with regard to the provisions of trilingual primary education in minority language communities of the European Union (pp. 32–44). Ljouwert/Leeuwarden; Ljouwert/Leeuwarden: Fryske Akademy ; Mercator Education.

Elorza, I. (2013). The Basque education system.

Elorza, I., & Muñoa, I. (2008). Promoting the Minority Language Through Integrated Plurilingual Language Planning: The Case of the Ikastolas. Language, Culture and Curriculum, 21(1), 85–101. doi:10.2167/lcc345.0

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Task based learning

This past Thursday we had our last two presentations on language learning/teaching methods. The first one was on Process Programmes. When I first heard the name, at the beginning of the term, when our teacher introduced the list of methods we were going to study, I thought it would be linked with cognitive psychology and our brain working like a computer. Well, none of that, at least by what was mentioned in class. Our classmates focused on Task Based Learning (TBL), leaving Content Based Learning (CBL) aside.

They started off with Jimmy, who happened to be Charlie's twin brother and, of course, we were a bit put off, thinking that was an easy trick (we have become really picky as the term developed, it seems), but we soon saw that it was nothing like Charlie's activity, so we agreed to give it a try. At least that was the impression I got from our reaction while the presentation started. So, we made our list for a healthy breakfast for Jimmy, who was unfit, just like Charlie. I wonder if it would be wise to carry out such an activity in our schools, bearing in mind the amount of children who are overweight. Would they feel comfortable? Could some of them feel like a line had been crossed? On the other hand, we are talking about Jimmy, not Mikel or Aitor. The alter ego who faces and successfully deals with all kinds of problems (or suffers the painful consequences of not having conquered) is a very useful resource for children's learning. One of my best friend had Krispin, who had been running in the family for long, passed on from mother to daughter. All kinds of things happened to poor Krispin, depending on the child who listened to the stories. Children didn't seem to notice the trick, and seemed amused to find out about this character who happened to have the same problems as them.

Coming back to the presentation, I got a very clear idea: what really matters is the process, not the final outcome or product. Well, that is a big issue in education. It is a very nice thing to say, but are we really willing and prepared to assess the process, forgetting (mostly) the outcome? I don't think so. The final product is so deeply rooted into us, that we would need a huge effort to get rid of it. Still, it would do us so much good, and it would be so beneficial for many children!

I know I mentioned earlier in this diary that sometimes I felt like what we were learning was too far away from pre-primary teaching for me to be able to think how to adapt it. Well, none of that applies to TBL, because it is pure pre-primary teaching, just think of all those schools using project-based programmes in the Basque country.

Another interesting concept linked to TBL was transcending the classroom walls, which will eventually bring us to the learning community. That is a great idea, in my opinion. I love the Reggio Emilia air of TBL.

What I don't like that much is how we tend to choose the topics for the tasks or projects around here. At the end of the day, we somehow fool children to think that they chose the topic, when it was the teacher who had carefully planned it all well beforehand. Last year, we had the opportunity to read a paper on a project in a school inspired by Reggio Emilia, where the project unfolded genuinely following children's proposals. Children and teacher discovered the topic hand in hand, and it was beautiful. If the outcome is not really important, why does the teacher need to know the topic beforehand? I dream of a teacher like a storyteller we read about last year, who had a large gown, with lots of folds, where she hid small papers, and she could recall and re-create hundreds of stories just by reading the few notes on each small piece of paper. Wouldn't it be wonderful to become such a teacher!

Back to Earth, I have to mention that once again when talking on the disadvantages of TBL "too much freedom" came up, as well as the teacher needing to "control" (monitor was also mentioned). I am probably just old fashioned and have connections that give me goosebumps which younger students don't get when hearing those words.

The second presentation was on CLIL. It was also a very god presentation. The experiment to illustrate how different beaks are adapted to certain types of food was brilliant, I loved it. So, the two presentations introduced us to the content-language continuum, with CBL on one end (focus on learning content), TBL on the other end (focus on learning language), and CLIL in the middle. Of course, that is so in some ideal world, and not necessarily around here, and we had a chance to learn about the main problems of applying CLIL in our schools.

Funny to see that when our teacher asked if anybody had experienced CLIL in their education nobody mentioned the Minor we are currently taking. This unit, for instance, is pure CLIL. We have dealt with specific aspects of language, as well as contents on language learning/teaching, and I have the feeling the weight of both have been similar. CLIL is good too (well, good CLIL is good).

And finally, an interesting question our teacher threw when we were just finishing the lesson: what about those activities where children are asked to sit and colour or cut out and can stand for minutes in the English lesson receiving no input whatsoever, not producing and not thinking in English? We really need to think on ways to turn that around. It reminded me of the storytelling video we have just done in another unit. I did the storytelling with my 6 year-old niece, and I had never spoken English with her. I realised she knew quite a lot of vocabulary, but didn't recognise what I thought would be an easy question (how old are you?). Even though I did my in-school training at her school the previous two years, I didn't have the chance to attend their English lessons, but I do know they did colouring almost everyday. Our teacher's comment made me think on the kind of input she could have received.

Let's communicate!

Last Thursday we continued with our method presentations, and finally shifted from traditional methods, which focused on linguistic skills, to the communicative approach, that takes into account more skills and aims at making learners communicatively competent.

It was obviously a nice shift, and I really enjoyed both presentations. The first one was a general introduction to the communicative approach, and I felt our classmates did a very good job, because I guess the topic is so wide they could have gotten us lost in a big jungle. Instead, they focused on three activities representative of three different periods of development in the approach. We got to experience them and see the evolution from more guided and still grammar-based ideas, to activities where learners play a much more active role.

Besides, I had a chance to travel back in time and see the "Arthur&Mary" textbook which I have used (not a clue on exactly when, though), and it was interesting to look at it with my "teacher's specs" on. I remember having fun with the textbook, but now that I look at it and compare it with even more "fun" things that could be done, I can see it was still quite old fashioned. I have to say that the dialogue we read was very realistic, though. The situation might not have been too real, especially if the textbook was used with children, like it was with us (it pictures Arthur arriving late at work and making up a lie with Mary's help), but the dialogue itself was good. The pictures also helped a lot, and were really rich and appealing.

One of the main ideas I got out of the presentations was that the activities proposed to learners must be meaningful to them; the students must have their own purpose other than doing as they are told. This is linked with other things we have been reading on scaffolding in another unit: we should leave behind the discussion on the learner-centred approach vs. teacher-directed approach, and think of a learning-centred teaching. Our activities in class have one goal: to promote learning, which is constructed while interacting. Learning for all those involved in the activity, and learning which will reflect on teaching.

From that point of view, learning is somewhat ephemeral and fragile, because it doesn't necessarily have a material form and it can easily vanish if we are not careful enough to make it visible for the whole group, but it leaves permanent traces among those who have actually participated in the learning process. It is the teacher's responsibility to promote engaging as many students as he/she can in the learning process that can potentially happen in each lesson, and that is not always easy. Too often students are not interested in learning what the curriculum says, and very few have the guts to drop out to pursue their real interest, like Steve Jobs (I am thinking of university students now, not pre-primary or primary students). And too often too, the teacher will insist on producing the learning she/him had in mind, and not what students are interested in learning (this happens at all stages in the educational system, but is becomes more common as you "climb up the ladder", because teachers feel the pressure to deliver outcomes through their students' achievements).

The second presentation, on natural way, was very good too. We really enjoyed our italian lesson, and they managed to communicate and make us experience what the method was about perfectly. I liked the idea of lessons seeming casual, the easygoing atmosphere, using realia, gestures and total physical response (TPR). The method seems to draw on earlier methods we have seen, since besides TPR, I saw a lot of suggestopedia in it. I liked very much the concept of i+1, that input which is partly comprehensible, but partly forces you to use inference to create meanings which are new to you. It is a very powerful resource and, again, very much linked with scaffolding, as the +1 bit of the concept will only be grasped with support.

More on integration and contextualisation, and the task feedback circle

Friday was a bit harder for all of us, I guess. We continued reflecting on perceptive skill teaching, and the importance of integrating listening/reading exercises into wider activities that will work on several skills, as well as the importance of setting all activities into a meaningful and attractive context for learners. Last Friday, the focus of interest was, once again, dreaming of the day we will finally graduate, and maybe go abroad to work and study.

Now, the task feedback circle seems so obvious that one wonders how come it was hardly ever used before. As a matter of fact, I doubt it is widely used even now. I think that nowadays we get confused, and instead of setting clear tasks to students, we actually do the task for them, and I am not talking particularly on listening/reading activities, but assignments in general. But, I guess that is another story.

As for the newspaper picture our teacher showed us, with four young women sitting at the table with trays of food, I was quite surprised to see us forgetting about our context (a degree in education, where we have been trained on how misleading our prejudices can be, and how harmful they are for teaching), and happily commenting on where they were from and so on.

More method presentations and some red lights in my head

Last Thursday we continued with our presentations on methods that have been used to teach/learn languages. It was the turn for Community Language Learning (CLL) and Total Physical Response (TPR), two of my favourite so far.

CLL, as originally designed, might be very tedious and too teacher focussed for my liking, bearing in mind that the teacher has to translate all that learners want to say. Still, I like the community bit, the idea that we learn through interaction, especially languages. The presentation was very good, but two things grabbed my attention: several of my classmates seemed to have difficulty believing that you could learn a language "just" by talking, without anything actually "being taught" to you. We didn't discuss on the issue, but I got the feeling that they thought some "proper teaching" was needed in order to learn a language. I wonder how they learned to lie, cheat, copy in exams etc; did their teachers and parents teach them how to? I guess that I am among those who believe that most of us learn despite those who try to "teach" us.

I also have the feeling that our primary education classmates are much more into an educare perspective than into the educere view, whereas those of us coming from the pre-school degree have the opposite view. It is just a feeling, since we haven't had the chance to discuss these issues seriously in class, but I see it in the activities they propose and their comments, as well as how "us", pre-primary education students, react to those comments and proposals.

The other issue that caught my attention is related to the same issue. In the CLL presentation, one of the presenters pointed out among the disadvantages of the method that giving too much freedom to learners could lead to problems (the leading role is meant to shift from teacher to learners as the latter improve their command of the language). Now, in my opinion, there is no such a thing as too much freedom. Of course, in some cases learners will need to be given more support when it comes to dealing with freedom, they will need resources, but limiting freedom is not the solution!

I guess this is one of those things that you learn when you are with a younger generation who has not experienced clear lack of freedom, as opposed to the subtle lack of freedom we are subjected to nowadays, and didn't have to bother thinking about it. To me, hearing those words in a twenty year-old is simply outrageous. I sense a disturbing wish/need to control children in some of my classmates, who will soon be teachers.

The second presentation, on TPR, was also very good. TPR is clearly a method which should be behind most pre-primary education activities, since it is very close to children and the way they learn naturally. It is also very suitable for creating a positive atmosphere in the classroom, and for community building. We all laughed a lot in that presentation, and laughing together brings people close (as long as it "laughing with" and not "laughing at"). It gives learners a sense of competence because it allows to communicate using your body, and it enables the teacher to integrate assessment in the learning activity itself, which I'd say is a big bonus. We haven't talked much on assessment yet, but I prefer integrating it into learning activities, rather than having a separate assessment activity, especially taking into account that time seems to be one of the limiting resources in our schools.

Essay no. 2: What if exams could be done cooperatively?

I was once told that a degree is meant to give you a system/method to face problems, not a pile of information. During our degree, we have been told once and again about the importance of cooperative learning and group work. Let’s imagine a teacher chose to assess cooperative learning and working skills in an exam.

At the beginning of the term, this teacher might ask his/her students to write an essay, using conditionals, answering to this question: “Imagine that on the day of the exam, a teacher let you use your notes, books and even the Internet to answer a set of questions, offered the opportunity to either take it the usual way (i.e. individually) or do it cooperatively, and gave you 15 minutes to discuss and decide among all classmates. What would be your proposal to your classmates, taking into account that the teacher asked you to come up with a solution that would enable to assess both cooperative skills and individual learning accomplished on the contents of the unit?”

Later on, on the day of the exam, the teacher would actually put that into practice. Maybe the students would choose to do it in cooperation, split into small groups to outline the main ideas that the answer to each question should contain, then discuss them in the large group, and afterwards take some time to write the answers individually.

But, then again, I wonder if any of this could ever happen around here.

Connecting the dots by Steve Jobs

Our last lesson of the week was a "suggestopedic" listening activity. I say it was suggestopedic because it conveyed a positive message for my classmates, who are young and will soon graduate. Steve Jobs could have been talking to them, instead of those thousands of Stanford graduates.

Jobs' speech brought Berger's Invitation to sociology. A humanistic perspective to my mind.We read it on our first year of the degree, and I really enjoyed it. Berger said that the reason why when we look back on our lives the dots seem to connect is because we desperately need to find a meaning to life. We need to believe we are actually going somewhere, that living is about going, and not just being. So, in his opinion, we deceive ourselves when we connect the dots. These matters can't be bothering my classmates just yet, as they only have a few dots behind.

As for the activity itself, I found it very interesting and amusing. The video was interesting, and the introductory chat we had before watching it revealed how it related to us, granting that attention would be payed. Then, of course, knowing that we would have to answer some questions, and knowing the questions beforehand, helped greatly focus our attention. I liked very much the part where we shared in pairs our answers; I think that helps so much to build confidence and give us a chance to know each other. You can't really expect a group of students to learn cooperatively before they get to know each other, so you have to create opportunities for that in class.

Making sure that students see that the teacher is on their same side, and not in front, is one of the basic ingredients of a successful learning process.

Silent way and suggestopedia

Well, silent way was something different, that's for sure. Our classmates showed us a video during their presentation and it seemed really difficult for the teacher. Well, maybe it seemed difficult to me because I find it so hard to remain silent. Still, the teacher "talked" with his face, his arms, his body... so he was silent, but not passive by any means. Since we didn't experience the method on us, I can't really imagine how it would feel to learn that way. I think the teacher and the students need to create a secure atmosphere, because being silent actually makes you more exposed in a way. And I think you also need to be more careful not not hurt anyone's feelings.

I liked the idea of applying the general idea behind silent way; creating a space for your students' speech, listening. One of our readings last week said that being a bad speaker is a difficult art; well, listening is much harder to master. Just taking whatever the other has to say, without seeing yourself in a tennis match, waiting for the ball to reach to you so you can send it back over the net.

And then it was our turn: suggestopedia. It is great to see that we went a long way since the first days after we got the assignment, when one of our groupmates felt desperate because she said she couldn't understand a word. No doubt she was experiencing the psychological barriers suggestopedia tries to tear down. And then, we read the text the four of us together, and it was great, a real dialogic reading, and we were all set to go. We had our doubts on how to use the video we created, and the ideas we got in the feedback after our presentation would probably have worked better but, nevertheless, I felt happy with what we did. I really like my groupmates. I knew one of them from our second year, although I never had the chance to work with her, and the other two were new to me. They are very easy going and work hard, so things run smoothly. One of them is quite shy, so I think the rest of us will have an opportunity to practise the silent way method, and see if we make more space for her in the coming assignments.

Grammar-translation and audiolingual

We had our first two group presentations on English teaching methods on the first lesson of the week. One group taught us some French with the grammar-translation method, and the other one used the audiolingual method to teach English to us.

Grammar-translation seems a really outdated method, which relies heavily on individual written exercises and, therefore, is mainly aimed at developing reading and writing skills. It was interesting to see that most of us thought that this old fashioned method wasn't used at all nowadays, until one of our classmates pointed out that it is still very common and our teacher told us that our urge to translate English words into Basque or Spanish is a symptom of having been exposed to this method. Still, the exercise our classmates proposed (translating a French poem) was fun, but I guess that if we had done it individually instead of in pairs, it wouldn't have been half as nice.

I guess I felt comfortable with the method because I am familiar with it. It is quite amazing to realise that we can easily get used to doing things in a certain way, even if we don't particularly like it. "Better the devil you know than the devil you don't"...

For audiolingual, we repeated several times a small dialogue, and I also felt like traveling back in time. Repeating the dialogue piece by piece all together made me feel a bit silly, and brought religion to my mind, I don't know why. I didn't like that part, not because of anything my classmates did, but because of the vague memories it triggered. You never know what a melody, a situation or a dialogue will bring to other people's minds; an activity that seems harmless to you can be disturbing to somebody else, and something that you might fear will be too plain can be a blast for others. I guess you always have to leave some space for surprise when you are teaching (and learning!).

As for the classmates who did the presentations, I do know that there is more pressure and anxiety with the presentations this year, because they have to be done in English, but in general they seemed to be quite calm, although sometimes it was a bit more noticeable that one just to get there and finish up the presentation as quickly as possible.

My experience as a language learner

I have just read over what I wrote on my experience learning English last year, and there isn't much I could add to those memories, I think. So, instead of trying to squeeze my brain on that, I would like to share my thoughts on another topic, closely linked with learning in general, related to ways of doing.

Since the beginning of the Minor, we have been told about the importance of consistency in the methods used to teach English. We have also been told similar things on how children should learn how to write, for instance, because it can be very disturbing or harmful for some to shift from a constructivist method to a traditional one all of a sudden.

I can obviously see the point of the advice we have been given, and I know that those children who have difficulties adapting to change, or children who live in particularly unstable environments or circumstances can suffer a lot from the lack of consistency in the teaching style and methods used at school. But still, I believe in the benefits of diversity, even when it comes to methods and styles. Offering the experience of diversity in teaching styles and methods to each child, taking into account that the threshold which will separate diversity from chaos will be different for each person, can improve chances to learn, I believe, because it creates opportunities to learn different and diverse things.

There are no good or bad methods, there is only good or bad teachers. That is where we need to be consistent, when it comes to having good teachers. And, even then, the odd bad teacher is also needed in order to appreciate the good ones.

Becoming a good speaker

Our last lesson this week was devoted to learning about how to make a good presentation. We read some tips in groups, and then mixed the groups up, so each one of us would know about a different tip and could tell the rest (our teacher used the information gap resource once again to press us to listen to each other, as the story each one of us had to tell was different from the rest).

We also watched a video, where Steve Jobs presented an Apple product to a more than passionate crowd (as teachers, we will need to win our crowd, they will not be fanatical fans who had to wait for hours to have the privilege of listening to us, which is a great disadvantage compared to Jobs, by the way). I agree on the fact that teachers need to be aware that, above all, they are communicators, and copying techniques used by sellers, such as Jobs, can be a good idea, but do teachers "sell" education? Is education another commodity? Is a teacher a Disney World entertainer who puts up a different and exciting show everyday, so school will be only and always fun? I have written on those concerns many times in this blog before, and I find it hard to strike a balance between the "no pain, no gain" applied to education on one end, and the entertainer-teacher on the other end.

Can I tell you a personal story?

Our teacher started one of the lessons of the week with that question. Of course, being gossipy as we are, we were all ears, so the first of her objectives (grab our attention) was fulfilled. That is an important lesson for future teachers: turn to our lower instincts when it comes to gaining attention!

She told us a story of what had happened to her last summer. Of course, parts of the story sounded a bit fishy (being offered to become a gym trainer a having doubts about taking the job, when you are lecturing at university?), because we know that all she does is for a purpose, and not for the sake of just chatting, but it was quite close to something which actually could have happened to her. She did repeat and stress some of the things she said, so we got a few hints here and there, and afterwards, she asked us to tell each other what she had told us in small groups. Then, she made specific questions about some of the things she had said, until we gave her the five phrasal verbs she had used in her story.

We had another chance to experience a way to learn grammar in a real context, integrated in an meaningful activity. Of course, as we discussed, it is much harder to make up a whole "classroom situation" in which as a teacher you can "disguise" your didactic objectives and contents, so students will learn them feeling they are not "studying". That sounds very familiar to those of us taking the pre-school of pre-primary teacher education degree, because all the activities which a school teacher for ages 0 to 6 need to be meaningful to children first of all, because otherwise they will simply not do them. So, in a way, our teacher defends that the ways of doing which are common in pre-school should be extended to primary school as well (the minor we are taking is open to both pre-school teacher education students, and primary teacher education students), which I totally agree with.