Here, however, is my tuppence worth on my understanding of demand high teaching moments based on what I have discovered here and elsewhere:
1. It seems to be incorporating complexity and moving away from the accuracy – fluency continuum which has dominated for so long
2. Based on this, perhaps it is more correct to look at a Venn diagram of accuracy, fluency and accuracy where tasks move slowly towards the ‘perfect storm’ overlap of all three?
3. I believe Merrill Swain was the first to put forward an output hypothesis where learners could provide themselves with their own input+1. She did this as a response to Krashan’s comprehensible input+1 around the 80s if my memory serves me well
4. Lexical inferencing could certainly be a solid example of a demand high teaching opportunity … hopefully I’ll get the article published to illustrate my point here!

Margaret

Demand high is a serious, thoughtful attempt to update a humanistic approach to ELT, whose questions are measured and deserve our attention. They invite us to demand commitment and effort from ourselves and our students, and they ask us to re-visit our tired old practices and revitalise our teaching. I agree with Peter: there’s no need to get intellectual here; Adrian and Peter, both great teachers and teacher trainers themselves, invite us to role up our sleeves and get to work on the practical matter of improving our relationships with our students and demanding the best of them. These are practical matters – they have to do with improving our craft.

Just found your page – I’m a slow learner! It looks very good, I’ll follow it, and I wish you the best.

Thanks for keeping me posted with your news regularly, which I enjoy reading so much and that prove quite useful for my professional life.

Now,I would like to ask you for a favour.As I am about to retire and will not use this email address anymore,I would really appreciate it if you could send the next series of posting to this new address:

rosangela_valle02@hotmail.com

With many thanks

Rosangela Valle.

On Tue, 22 Jan 2013 12:16:52 +0000, Demand High ELT wrote:

> demandhighelt posted: “Here is a longer article about the technique of teaching one-to-one-in-a-group. You’ll find some background discussion plus detailed practical guidance on using this classroom technique. It follows on from Adrian’s earlier article. Click this link t” > >

I only discovered demand high today but i hope what I’ve said is on topic.

“Was this any different from what you usually do?”

I think its something that I do fairly often, so it wasn’t that new to me. Isn’t it fairly natural to jump on what learners are saying sometimes? But I did try to concentrate on whether it was helping other students or not.

“In your view, did the experiment succeed? How do you know?”

I think it depended on the length of time I was working with a student. In short bursts it was fine. Students were attentive and often also played my role (helping them find vocabulary or phrases they were looking for, for example) but if a longer dialogue developed, a lot of classic signs of students switching off appeared (checking times on phones, doodling, looking at desk, looking at phone under desk etc). About 20-30 seconds was a maximum.

“Were the rest of the class engaged by what was happening? Did they learn something?”

I think I would need an outside observer to tell me whether all of them were paying attention. It felt like they were, but I suspect it was mainly the 2-3 most attentive students giving me this feeling. I think about half of them were silent, making it very hard to tell.

“Was there any connection between the quality of your attention to the individual student’s work and the degree of engagement of the rest of the class in what was happening?”

Well, how the hell would I measure that ?

Kylie Malinowska

Sometimes, however, we might, in our eagerness to stick to plans and “cover” what is there to be “covered”, find that devoting time to one particular student’s language struggles, especially if we were not anticipating or “planning” to deal with them, is making us feel anxious and feel that the class is being waylaid in some way.
I certainly have had that feeling, despite being aware that I’m helping a student!

On their blog Demand High ELT, Adrian Underhill & Jim Scrivener blog about teaching “one-to-one” within a whole group, and state that it can benefit the whole group. They also offer specific techniques for carrying it out successfully.

After reading Underhill & Scrivener’s posts, I feel I’m much more aware, when such “one-to-one” situations arise, that I am helping everybody else in the classroom as well, and I’m finding myself “grabbing” the opportunity, even dwelling on it and cherishing it.

Thank you, Jim and Adrian, for your enlightening posts on the “one-to-one” teaching within a group and the specific techniques offered, and, of course, the concept itself.

In classroom environments, It’s very often that we find ourselves, as teachers, having to “deal with”, or respond to, or comment on students’ performance and language. This is part and parcel of our role as communication facilitators in a foreign language class.

Sometimes, however, we might, in our eagerness to stick to plans and “cover” what is there to be “covered”, find that devoting time to one particular student’s language struggles, especially if we were not anticipating or “planning” to deal with them, is making us feel anxious and feel that the class is being waylaid in some way.
I certainly have had that feeling, despite being aware of helping a student!

After reading your posts, I feel I’m much more aware, when such “one-to-one” situations arise, that I am helping everybody else in the classroom as well, and I’m finding myself “grabbing” the opportunity, even dwelling on it and cherishing it.

Interesting post, thanks.

I agree students need to be challenged, but I think that more than teacher intervention, it’s the task (or exercise) that has to help the students push the enevelope a bit. I think that a more direct, and, ultimately, downright honest approach to teacher intervention such as the one you use with your classes makes perfect sense, but it is inextricably linked with the context one operates in. As an example, in France, where I’m based, a great majority of my students often harbor very antagonistic, negative feelings towards English and learning English because when they were in school, they were often ridiculed by their teachers, or were scolded for making mistakes (god forbid!), or made to feel inadequate some way or other. Now, I know that’s not the kind of intervention you’re advocating, but I need to be cautious and tread very carefully because no matter how gentle and sensitive I try to be, to some students just trying to regain confidence, my attempts to upgrade the exchange as you call it, will smack of school and will be perceived as yet another put down.
Of course, I’m not in favor of anything goes, I’m just saying that in some cases, with some students short on confidence, delayed feedback may actually work best. Until they’ve learned to trust the teacher, but with some, this may take some time. So, demand high, but with an eye to where the human being is at.

Just slightly off the subject: it’d be interesting to expand a little and discuss Trainer’s intervention in TT sessions, maybe not here?

Warmest.

Chaz