Alpha and Omega - The Beginning and the End

The genesis of the whole notion that English speaking works differently from writing began in front of my first ESL class the moment I couldn't say I am exactly as it was printed. (I say I yam)It was years before I learned that Linking was the explanation for what was going on and I learned about that in Lydia Aiello’s pronunciation class.
Like most of my great opportunities I stumbled into this one by accident. Lydia was casting around the staff room for a supply teacher for her Friday Pronunciation Class. “I’ll do it!” The eagerness of my response was a measure of my ignorance about the task. “Are you sure?” she said, “It’s pronunciation?” No problem I assured – beginning to wonder what I had gotten myself into. Lydia is one of the most gifted teachers I have ever known. She left a lesson plan so complete a monkey could have followed it and the photocopying was done. I needn’t have worried. The lesson was about Linking and I don’t know about the students but it shifted my universe.
Lydia was chock-a block full of fascinating foibles about the way we speak English and I was hooked. Why doesn’t everyone know this I wondered? The following term I team-taught Lydia’s Friday Pronunciation Class on alternate Fridays and I was exposed to an entire curriculum of pronunciation. (Lydia has since published her method and exercises in a photocopiable workbook called Word Pals.) Then I signed up for Katherine Brillinger’s Teaching English Pronunciation certificate course and my fate was sealed.  My love-affair with how speaking works blossomed into a life-long romance.
A big break happened for me in 2002 when the well-dressed strangers from head office paid our site a visit looking for teachers to go overseas. Everyone was excited about the possibility and I knew they would never choose me over the experienced teachers who had expressed interest. I submitted my application anyway. The situation was reminiscent of the old army cartoon where a row of soldiers are lined up facing the Sgt. and he asks for, “Volunteers to step forward”. All the soldiers but one stepped backward. I was chosen to go to South Korea by simply standing still.  
I spent the winter teaching Korean English teachers about pronunciation and things I had learned from Lydia and Katherine. When the Korean school year started in March 2003, I taught 500 middle-school boys every week at Nonsan Middle School. There were 13 classes, 35-40 boys in each class and we met once a week for 45 minutes. My contract was up at the end of April so I would be standing in front of each class for a total of 4½ hours before I left the country. I had a progressive principal – Mr. Kim. He gave me carte blanche and it was daunting. I asked myself, “How can I affect these boys’ relationship to English for the rest of their lives in 4½ hours? Has that book been written? No it hasn’t. Can I even do it? I thought I could. 
The first thing they absolutely had to have was a functional phonetic alphabet. The ABC’s are only for writing. I had used the International Phonetic Alphabet long enough in Lydia’s class to know it was a pile of crap. I invented a more user-friendly English Phonetic Alphabet, and we started with that. The next thing I thought they needed to know was that English is a stress-based language and how speaking works at the word level. We also had time to cover how sentences worked with important words and unimportant words. Grammar isn't useful for speaking English, only for writing (and moderately useful at that). By the time I left, hundreds of 15 year-old boys were chatting away in English to the surprise and delight of Mr. Kim. Bear in mind, Korean school-children are trained to receive information and study - at school they don’t even talk Korean!
Something was obviously working and that was good, now all I had to do was convince the rest of the world to follow my program. When I got back to Canada the administration at my school wasn’t the least bit interested adding a speaking component to their program no matter how simple or important I thought it was. And they suggested I find another job.
Although my school was not interested in my suggestions I took theirs very seriously and approached Sheridan College with an idea for a new course – Speaking Canadian English based on the differences between written and spoken English. They were refreshingly open. If you can fill the seats – we will run the program. The rest is history. We filled the seats and still run the program. The textbook English is Stupid was printed in 2009 is now being taught in 14 countries around the world including the United States, China, India, Japan Italy and Iran.
We introduced English is Stupid at the big TESL Ontario Conference in Toronto only ten months ago. It was very warmly received. The teachers who bought books at our booth last year brought their friends and site managers this year. The traffic was so heavy at Thompson Language Center, the other booth operators came over to see what we were selling. By Saturday at noon hundreds of teachers had heard me speak, the Toronto Star wanted to write our story, the Royal Ontario Museum invited us to present a special education series and school boards across Ontario and Quebec had booked us for presentations.  
Alpha and Omega, the beginning was standing alone at the front of my first class not knowing the difference between writing and speaking and the end is the end of struggling alone to make long overdue changes in this industry.

Speaking English 2.0

Certified training in the Thompson Speaking Method. Saturday November 27 from 9:00- 4:00 in the Music Room at Bloor St. United – 300 Bloor St. W at Huron.

Early Bird $275. After Nov.10 $350. Space is limited.

To register email Judy@thompsonlanguagecenter.com or call (905) 838-1257

Big Day - TESL and TED

It is 3:32 a.m. and I can't sleep. I was asleep but then I woke up and now I can't get back to sleep. So you are stuck with me. 

My daughter Morgan and I are staying at the Sheraton Center in Toronto for a few days at the big TESL Ontario Conference. We have a booth for the book English is Stupid and we have several teacher materials for sale like posters and flashcards... things that go with the book. When I have to disappear to make a speech or lead a workshop, Morgan mans the booth. Yesterday I had 2 hours in the Dominion Ballroom. That was great. 

For the first hour I talked about how English occurs for learners in a presentation called Why Doncha Juspea Kinglish. Part of the answer is embedded in the question. In a phenomenon known as - linking - native English speakers consistently shuffle sounds around in order to start all words with consonants. (not at the beginning of sentence but the rest of the time). We don't know we do it and we do it all the time. Linking isn't slang or sloppy English it is the easiest way for humans to talk. The upshot for learners is they can't reconcile words they have studied with the words that they hear and the title of the talk is a literal example. 

The presentation was inspired by a student I taught many years ago. Manuel was 40 +, from South America, he was a doctor in his country. He was a fantastic student with a brilliant mind. Although it was unlikely at his age he would ever learn enough English to practice medicine again, he was committed to working in his field in some capacity. He was in my intermediate class for a few months and quickly advanced into the higher levels.  The year after Manuel was in my class I ran into him outside the library. We chatted for a while, school was going well but there was no job yet...I was disheartened by our conversation. Broken-hearted actually. Manuel didn't speak any better or differently than he did when he stepped into my classroom the year before. He had passed all his speaking tests but the bottom line was - he couldn't speak English any better than the first day he arrived in Canada. He was smart, hardworking and enrolled full-time in English class - Why couldn't he speak English? If I could answer that for Manuel, it would help a lot of people. Eventually I figured out why they don't just speak English, and what to do about it. There are 1.5 billion people in the world today using English as a Second Language, me and the other 180 teachers in the Dominion Ballroom today are the only one who knows how to fix their speaking. We are going to be very busy:)

The second hour I did a workshop on the English Phonetic Alphabet with some in-class exercises. It is absolutely critical for students to have a functional sound alphabet for learning to speak English because spelling is so random. The English Phonetic Alphabet (EPA) uses regular keyboard symbols and down-home common sense which no other phonetic alphabet has employed before so EPA is gaining popularity fast.  

It was a great day. Morgan and I talked to hundreds of people and sold lots of stuff. We ran out of posters and Vowel Cards (there are more at the office). After the show we kicked back, swam in the pool, hit the Irish Pub and when we finally got back to our room I fired up my laptop and there was a message from Mark Mulholland. He posted my spot on TEDxOakville from October 1, 2010. Please forward the link to anyone you think might be interested.  

http://tedxoakville.com/judy-thompson-three-secrets-you-need-to-know-about-spoken-english/

It was a big day.

I fell asleep because I was so tired but I didn’t stay asleep, I was too excited. It is 4:02 now and I’ll have to go back to sleep soon - it’s another big tomorrow.

The Most Ridiculous Thing you can Say to a Student

Sound it out is the most ridiculous thing anyone can say to a student because letters and sounds don’t go together in English. I learned this the hard way like everyone else.

After I finished my TESL (Teacher of English as a Second Language) program I volunteered at the local LINC (Language Instruction for Newcomers to Canada) Centre to gain experience. They let me assist the teacher in the lowest level class. Sometimes she let me teach. For obvious reasons I dubbed the class Kindergarten. The kindergartens were wonderful. They ranged in age from 19 to 85. The 19 year-olds were new immigrants, too old to integrate into high school and the seniors were citizens who had lived in Canada for a long time but had never learned the language. They had to learn it now because their grandchildren spoke only English and the old soldiers couldn’t communicate with their children's children.

The heart and soul of basic English is the verb to be:  I am, you are, he is… it is a little tricky explaining the verb to be without using the verb to be – in fact it is impossible. The verb to be is… If you pointed to yourself and said I and pointed to the class and said you they pointed to you and said I and pointed to themselves and said you like a two-bit vaudeville act but they weren’t trying to be funny, they were trying to learn. You cannot make this stuff up.

Anyways, the verb to be is quite critical and as a new teacher I was all fired up, full of good intentions and committed to making this class be the group was going to get the verb to be like it had never been gotten before. In big tidy letters I printed on the blackboard I am, you are, he is… I thought it would be a good idea to pronounce the words as I printed them. I couldn’t do it. I could not pronounce I am exactly as it was printed. The way I normally say these words did not match the letters I was putting on the board. I heard myself say I yam, you ware, he yiz…Holy mackerel this language is trickier than I thought. How does anyone learn it? How did I learn it? Then I remembered.

I remembered learning how to read. I was six years old, in Grade One at Clarkson Public School, my teacher was Miss Speck and I loved her. There is nothing in this world I wanted more than to please Miss Speck. There was sentence in front of me on the special Grade One three-lined paper and it was something like this:

The boy and the girl go into the house.

Miss Speck ran her finger under the words and as I read them out loud. For the first word I said /te he/and Miss Speck corrected me, the word is the Judy, carry on. It wasn’t very long before that word came up again and I read /te he/. Ever patient, Miss Speck reminded me it’s the Judy, sound it out she said to me. Well I was sounding it out and the letters said /tehe/ I had to read that word six times before I could over-ride Miss Speck’s instructions and get that t h e was pronounced /thu/  for one reason only – because Miss Speck said so. And that was good enough for me.

Reading is a game. You look at random groups of letters and try to guess what they might represent from the thousands of words you had already heard growing up in an English–speaking household. r e d was /red/, h e a d sounded like /hed/, s a i d sounded like /sed /– because Miss Speck said so. There is no sounding anything out – that is a pile of crap. How words look and how they sound are completely unrelated. Reading and Speaking are separate languages and suddenly it didn’t matter to me that sew and snow rhymed with go and blue rhymed with do and few and so on. 

Reading is a guessing game and I liked games so I was reading Walter Farley before Christmas (I also liked horses). Hundreds of thousands of trusting little English speaking children in North America today can’t read because people say sound it out to them and they try and try to do that. It is time someone told them letters don’t make any make any sense at all. Reading is based on guessing from listening. Students have been smacking their little hedz against the wall trying to sound it out which duzn’t actually werk. I was lucky to figure out quickly that Miss Speck was wrong, I still loved her but she was wrong. Now all I had to figure out was how to explain reading to the ESL students, who have never heard the English language in their lives.

Strangers Can Change our Lives in an Instant

Everyone knows about the big, high profile events like weddings and babies that we expect to alter the course of our lives. I am not talking about those. I’m talking about the imperceptible moments that sneak up on us, perhaps gain momentum in a series of coincidences and before we know it we are headed down a life path we didn’t know existed, a short time before.  The unemployment office was like that for me.

When I entered the Employment Centre I tore off number 36, sat down on a plastic chair and waited. Eventually Tanya called my number and I joined her in her tidy cubicle. It was Tanya who administered the aptitude test that revealed I should teach adults English. It was Tanya who ferreted out a list of colleges with TESL programs. She kept saying ESL this and TESL that and I finally had to interrupt her and ask her what ESL stood for? “English as a Second Language” she answered evenly and continued administering my instructions. I was to contact the schools on the list and start applying. I heard her call out, - '43' on my way out of the centre.

I went home and dialed Humber College. I did not know that Humber had one of the top TESL (Teacher of English as a Second Language) programs in the country - I didn’t know what TESL was until 30 minutes before I called them. I contacted them first because their campus was closest to my house.  When I phoned the college my intention was to register, let them know I would be attending their school in the fall, here’s your money, see you soon, that sort of thing. Not. The receptionist was snoody. She said the application deadline was on Friday and I better get my resume in if I wanted to be considered for an interview. They had already received more than 500 applications for 24 spots in the TESL course. Click.

Resume? I didn’t have a resume. Interview? I had never been to a job interview in my life. I thought people just registered for school? The world had changed since I finished university and stepped out to raise four children.

I knew what to do when two lambs were born at once or a foal wouldn’t lead. I could bush-hog the big field in a tank top to get a great tan and I could dazzle preschoolers with messy crafts at the co-op nursery school but for the life of me I could not think of a thing to put on a resume or find a single reason why anyone would accept me into the TESL program.

I called Tanya. I told her I needed a resume. “I can help you with that” she said, and she did. She asked me a few questions and without outright lying Tanya whipped up a resume that made it sound like I had done nothing but teach for the past 20 years. She got me an interview. I had no idea resume writing was so creative.  I would have hired me! For the next step, Tanya told me to get my hair done and find some nicer clothes.

Over time, I learned Humber had thrown out 350 of the 500 applications because they did not have university degrees. The remaining 150 candidates including me, were scheduled for group interviews. I was curious to see if that meant I would be interviewed by a group or in a group and in my case it meant both. The three women who had designed the Humber TESL course interviewed hopeful candidates, six at a time. The results of the interviews would be mailed. Thanks for coming out. Shut the door behind you. I was very glad for my haircut and new outfit.

Rural mail is delivered to mailboxes. The kids brought ours in everyday when they got off the school bus. The letter from Humber was fat so I was comfortable opening it in front of them. (It does not take much paper to say, “Sorry, you were not accepted”; I would have taken a thin envelope to my bedroom along with a box of Kleenex). Congratulations my letter began… that word hung in the air for a few minutes. I was going back to school. I was going to be a teacher. It was one of those pivotal events. Everything was going to different after that one word – Congratulations.

I was so thrilled I drove up to Orangeville to the unemployment office to thank Tanya for all she had done for me. I didn’t have an appointment and had to wait outside her cubicle for what seemed like a long time while she created a resume for another client. When she spotted me waiting she wondered if something was wrong. Far from it, I told her I got accepted to Humber College and would be starting classes in September and I wanted to thank her.  “Oh, you’re welcome” she smiled dismissively and immediately looked up at the number board for her next client.  

That was the moment that changed my life.

She didn’t know me from Adam and I never saw her again but in the normal course of her day she took this no-count country bumpkin and gave me a future full of promise and possibility. She changed my life and she did it like it was nothing. I wanted to do that. I wanted to impact people’s lives, to help them, to change their future forever and I wanted to do it deftly, like Tanya.

In my subsequent teaching career I developed a new way to train people to speak English and I wrote a book about it called English is Stupid. This led to other things. You may see me sometime, on youtube or TED.com, maybe at a business conference Opening Lines of Communication in the International Market place… You’ll be fidgeting with your pen and wondering what is for lunch and you’ll hear me say something that will rock your world. I am a stranger that can alter the course of your life in a heartbeat because of a torn piece of paper number 36, a conscientious government employee and a fat envelope.

Virgin Blogger

I am a virgin blogger. It is my first time, so be gentle.
My name is Judy but my students call me Teacher Judy. I can't seem to get them to stop, so I just go with it. God grant me the serenity to accept the things I cannot change ...
I teach English as a Second Language (ESL) to adults and I love my job:). I'll back up a little bit to how I got to be an ESL teacher, but we won't tarry here long. A few years ago I lost my job and decided to "embrace that opportunity to change my career direction" (they talked like that at the unemployment office.) A nice woman named Tanya gave me an aptitude test called Discovery. I answered a lot of questions into a computer and the program eventually identified: what I was good at, what my experiences were and what I liked as three separate fields. After analyzing the data, the computer revealed that it was more important for me to make a difference than for me to strictly make money, therefore I should be a teacher (I am not making this up). It concluded I should teach adults English. That was fairly specific, so I did. That was one smart computer. I sit here tapping before you today, the world's happiest, poorest ESL teacher.

It is easy to make a difference teaching English because English is so messed up.  For one thing, English letters and sounds don't go together. For example -  r e d  -   h e a d  -  s a i d - There is no way to tell from the spelling that red /red/, head /hed/, and said /sed/ rhyme. But they do. Students can't reconcile words they have studied with the language they hear and they don't realize how much guessing is involved in English. I have some fast and easy solutions for these problems, so everyone is happy.

The biggest problem is not that English is so tricky, it's that students take it so personally. When they look at tiny little words like  t o and g o  and can't figure out why they don't sound the same - they feel stupid. Of course they are not stupid - English is Stupid. Students are on some level relieved when I tell them stories about how I get tripped up in English, like last week when my phone wasn't working.  
My home phone would ring once, then the line would go dead. I could still dial out so I called the repair number and listened to an automated operator list several options "in order to serve you better..." and I punched a series of keys according to her instructions. Finally she wanted to use voice recognition to verify it was actually me and not some crank caller trying to get my line fixed. I heard her say, "To identify yourself, please repeat this phrase - Adele, my voice is my password". Now, the automated operator that searches for phone numbers calls herself Emily so I didn't think it was especially weird that the machine which reports repairs calls herself 'Adele'. So I repeated her phrase, "Adele, my voice is my password" She responded in her annoyingly even tone, "I'm sorry that is not a match". What the f...! Not a match? It is my phone! It is my voice! What more do you want me to do?!!! She said,"Could you try to repeat the phrase again, "At Bell, my voice is my password". Oh brother.
When I repeated that phrase the machine recognized my voice and authorized a service call to take the mouse nest out of the junction box at the end of the driveway. 
When communication breaks down for me and I am a native English speaker, I often wonder how my students cope with this crazy language? In my case it might not be all the fault of the language, there is something else I need the serenity to accept, I'm blond.