I learnt to read at school. At first, that meant reading out loud while somebody listened. It was a public experience. This oralizing from words on a page felt strange but exciting, as if something was passing through me from the page to the sounds I uttered. It was like being part of something new. Although the ultimate goal would be to read silently, Mr Harding, a primary school teacher, reminded us that we could still sometimes break that rule.

Once it is up and running, the subjective classroom is a busy place in which everybody is invited to contribute actively. The focus is on developing skills applied to meaningful content. Individual contributions are essential to the construction of what goes on, and people participate once they understand their voice matters. This is by no means simple for people more familiar with a more directive, objective classroom, but helping them change their perspective, even partially, is a mutually enriching process.

Be nice to your turkey this Christmas Benjamin Zepahaniah (1958-2023), British Carribean dub poet, actor, recipient of no fewer than 16 honorary doctorates, professor of poetry and creative writing, left us yesterday. Already gone. But his work lives on. He encouraged people to read and he made people listen. He has always provoked surprise and […]

Façons d’apprendre et dissonances scolaires Oui, au commencement était le verbe. Et dans mon cas personnel, le verbe était anglophone. Les adultes nous reprenaient s’ils nous entendaient dire ou nous voyaient écrire I done it au lieu de I did it, mais c’était pour nous obliger à bien parler, à bien écrire. Tout au long […]

Intralingual translation – Students vs Chat GBT When we think of translation in language teaching, it is typically interlingual translation; that is to say, translation between students’ mother tongue and the foreign language they are learning. In France, where I teach English, this sort of translation is rarely used in a language lesson apart from […]

Learning how to begin a story When we start a story, we send out a signal to indicate our presence, get people’s attention, and invite them to connect to something different which is about to start. Once upon a time – or its equivalent – is a widely accepted signal for starting a story. But a […]

Learning to accept being the focus of attention The posts in this section of the blog are about The Subjective Classroom. Students and observers have often said that they find me calm as a teacher. If this is true, then it was by no means a given. I recently ran a short public speaking workshop […]

Weaving, absorbing and telling a story This post considers issues raised when teachers become aware of their own voice and the way it sounds. It takes the example of when a teacher needs to tell a story to the class. Obviously, many of the observations will apply to any situation where you find yourself in […]

Close encounter with classroom storytelling We all know stories. But how can they come into classroom learning? When I first fell into teaching English as a Foreign Language (EFL) in 1981, John Morgan and Mario Rinvolucri were already developing their ideas on the use of storytelling for the language classroom. A chance encounter with Mario […]