English through Personal Development
By Michael Berman
Mike Solly in the April 2008 edition of the EL Gazette wrote “It is my belief that global issues and questions of identity start from “I” and “who I am”, and what I have called English through Personal Development or ETPD is very much about these questions – making them the starting point of our approach to teaching rather than something that might get dealt with by accident in class.
For many of us life is spent searching for something that we never seem able to find. The reason for this can perhaps be found in the following Sufi tale. It can be used for teaching ETPD with a pre-intermediate level class:
The Key
A drunk is searching for something on the ground under a street lamp. A friend sees him there and asks him what he is doing. “I’m looking for my key,” the drunk says. The friend helps him search but half an hour later they still have not found the key. The friend asks, “Are you sure you lost it here?” “No,” replies the drunk, “I lost it inside my house.” “Then why are you looking here?” – “Because the light is here” was his answer.
Choose a suitable moral for the tale. If none of the suggestions below appeal to you, then find one of your own:
- Many hands make light work (English)
- One dog barks because it sees something; a hundred dogs bark because they heard the first dog bark. (Chinese)
- Eyes can see everything except themselves. (Serbo-Croatian)
- A candle lights others but consumes itself. (English)
- Do not look for apples under a poplar tree. (Slovakian)
- A needle wrapped in a rag will be found in the end. (Vietnamese)
Now work with a partner and tell each other what you are looking for in life and what you are doing to make sure you find it:
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“The ultimate goal of the educational process is to give learners autonomy and help the become independent and creative while using their second language, by improving and bettering themselves and thus adding value to the communities they live in. Therefore, striking a balance between the business-oriented approach and the humane one is essential, to my mind, in our knowledge driven society in the twenty-first century” Pascariu, R. (2009) ‘Personalisation in teaching – from think big to think small’. In IATEFL Voices January-February 2009 Issue 206
What Roxana does here is to help to explain just why it is that ETPD is so important. For by working on improving and bettering ourselves, we not only add value to the communities we live in, but also to society as a whole.
About Michael Berman
Michael Berman BA, MPhil, PhD, works as a teacher and a writer. Publications include A Multiple Intelligences Road to an ELT Classroom and The Power of Metaphor for Crown House, and The Nature of Shamanism and the Shamanic Story for Cambridge Scholars Publishing. Shamanic Journeys through Daghestan and Shamanic Journeys through the Caucasus are both due to be published in paperback by O-Books in 2009. A long-awaited resource book for teachers on storytelling, In a Faraway Land, will be coming out in 2010. Michael has been involved in teaching and teacher training for over thirty years, has given presentations at Conferences in more than twenty countries, and hopes to have the opportunity to visit many more yet. For more information please visit www.Thestoryteller.org.uk.
*ELTWeekly would like to thank Michael Berman for contributing this article.
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