Our special guest is Marina Petrović, a teacher of English and Serbian as a Foreign Language, who lives with her husband and two kids in the city of Novi Sad, Serbia, teaching at her own school.

Marina loves creating digital teaching materials and runs a number of language teaching websites which she has made on her own: Learn Serbian blog, LeWiNoW, EngleskiZaPocetnike and Skola Srpskog. She holds a BA degree in English Language and Literature, is LANCELOT trained and IH COLT certified.

Marina has kindly agreed to give an exclusive interview to our website as online language teaching expert. We believe that her answers will show our teachers what they could do if they believe in advanced technological methods of teaching but have no possibilities to use them in their institutions – consider becoming a part of global online language teachers network, for example.

 

BRITANNIA: How shall we introduce you to our readers? You work for a language school in Novi Sad, apart from your Internet teaching, don’t you?

MARINA PETROVIĆ: Yes, my husband and I have been running a private language school for 15 years now and for the past 3 years I’ve been teaching English and Serbian online.

BRITANNIA: Teachers are very busy people. Why have you decided to add blogging to your commitments? Is it a sort of hobby for you or does it help you in your main job?

{rokbox title=|Skola Srpskog|}images/Articles/Skola Srpskog.jpg{/rokbox} MARINA PETROVIĆ: I started www.learnserbian.blogspot.com because there’s been scarcity of teaching materials for my online students of Serbian. As for www.engleskizapocetnike.com (English for Beginners) and www.lewinow.com (Learn English with Ivan now), I created them for my f2f students, so that they can quickly refer to all the grammar explanations and related exercises which they often need for their tests at school. It goes without saying that I enjoy creating blogs, sites and digital teaching materials… it’s like a hobby to me.

BRITANNIA: At Philological Department of St. Petersburg university we have Chair of Applied and Mathematical Linguistics, which deals with such things as educational computer programmes.

MARINA PETROVIĆ: Wow, if I lived in St. Petersburg, I’d be working there for sure! I studied English Language and Literature at University of Novi Sad, but I went to secondary school for Computer Science. I dreamt of making computer games! My final graduation paper was Prikaz gramatike engleskog jezika u GWBasic-u – Outline of English Grammar in GWBasic. This was what I enjoyed doing – I wrote a longish programme in GWBasic with short explanation of basic English grammar and one exercise for each topic. This was back in 1989 – ancient history!

BRITANNIA: Teaching on-line and teaching face-to-face: are these two separate things for you or do you use blended teaching in your school?

MARINA PETROVIĆ: I started thinking about introducing ICQ lessons back in 1998. But it wasn’t until 2008 when I started my Moodle site for students [Software for educators who want to create their own online courses. – Britannia]. In time I noticed they didn’t visit it often, so I decided to abandon Moodle and start searching for more attractive ways to entice my students to use the Internet and English outside the classroom.

I think times have changed so quickly so it is very difficult for teachers to change their perspective. We have to start thinking how to present teaching content in such a way as to attract our students, like real marketers. If our students choose a particular social network, I’d suggest we adapt to this trend and learn to use it as a learning management system.

BRITANNIA: Tell our readers how you came to create Detective Stories for your Serbian classes.

MARINA PETROVIĆ: In April I organized an “Easter egg hunt” on my www.skolasrpskog.com site, and one of my students found a picture of an egg, worth two 1:1 online lessons. When I asked him what he’d like to do, he suggested some kind of “detective story”, so that he could practice asking questions. That reminded me of a great lesson from Tom Hutchinson’s Project textbook, and I turned the original detective story into a 3-part lesson, where a student is supposed to “crack the case”.

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After creating the first part of the story, another student of mine, who lives in Saudi Arabia, said he’d like to try to take the same lesson and he even recorded questions for the suspects. At that point, I realized that the whole concept of a “traditional lesson” can actually become a two way process, where a student can decide when the story ends or what happens next. This is what I applied in the following story called Mystery of the Poisoned Beer, which is entirely a product of my imagination, helped by my husband’s shrewd comments and feedback.

BRITANNIA: How long did it take you to prepare these lessons?

MARINA PETROVIĆ: Well, it takes a lot, at least a few hours for one lesson – my problem is that I can never figure out how much time I spend creating one lesson exactly. It’s an ongoing process for me. I correct and add things after each session. The same goes for the stuff I create for my F2F lessons.

BRITANNIA: And is it worth wasting all this time? Would you say that there is any radical difference in results, in pace of learning or in something else when we use IT and when we expertly use just a good modern “paper” coursebook?

MARINA PETROVIĆ: It’s a tricky question. It depends on a student. Some of them are doing just great with a paper textbook and are completely lost when they I ask them to write me an e-mail, others thrive in surfing the Internet and attending my online sessions. That’s why I think it is very important for a teacher to take into account students’ personal preferences and accept them. Unfortunately, I often come across heated “for and against discussions” (textbooks vs. Dogme, “paper” coursbooks vs. online courses, learning in Second Life vs. m-learning and similar) – with such a variety, I think it would be wise simply to pluck the best of such a great variety and enjoy the process, instead of taking sides.

BRITANNIA: And have you managed to notice any difference in results yourself (leaving aside your own pleasure of working with digital activities)?

MARINA PETROVIĆ: Online teaching and learning is not mainstream yet, and it is still early to talk about “difference in results”, at least in this part of the world 🙂 However, I can give you a link to an article about a teacher in Minnesota, who used his own money and grants he won to buy Nintendos, laptops and voice recorders for his class and started teaching children their school subjects through games. In four months their scores in Maths and Reading rose from below average to for third grade to mid-fourth-grade level.

BRITANNIA: If you see that your student is doing fine with a coursebook, would you leave them with it or would you try and “convert” them into your beliefs?

MARINA PETROVIĆ: I will give you an example. I teach one group of teenagers who “don’t like computers” – they enjoy socializing, going out and “learning in an old-fashioned way”, as they say. So, instead of talking about “learning with computers/Internet” and trying to “convert” them, I found the interview with Garry Vaynerchuk where he explains how he made money with his online show about wine etc. etc. and suddenly they became interested in “the Internet” and actually, the push button for them was “making money on the Internet”. It goes without saying that they are looking forward to watching interviews online and some of them expressed a wish to learn how to start their own blog.

It is a teacher’s job to find out what a student is interested in and to broaden their horizons, especially if they are working with the kids and teenagers who will live in a completely different world from ours (and unfortunately, neither they nor their parents are aware of what skills will be essential in that world).

Now, back to your earlier question, this is called “blended”, it’s not exclusive – for me, everything that keeps my students’ attention is “technology”.

BRITANNIA: Isn’t there a danger that ‘hi-tech’, ‘modernistic’ settings of a lesson will become a distractor for students, instead of being a facilitation?

MARINA PETROVIĆ: Imagine yourself asking me the same question 25-30 years ago – a cassette player and video player would have been regarded as “hi-tech” and a possible distractor 🙂 Smart boards in F2F teaching or virtual classrooms in online or computer projectors in blended teaching are mere tools. I believe that if a lesson is well prepared, there’s hardly any danger of technology becoming an obstacle to teaching.

BRITANNIA: There is an opinion that with the use of technology, most of the lesson time is devoted to clicking, having fun and struggling with computer failures instead of speaking practice. What do you think?

MARINA PETROVIĆ: I suppose you are referring to synchronous online teaching. In order to avoid this, it’s wise to meet with your student(s) before the first session actually takes place. In this informal session you can show them the virtual classroom and explain what to do if some components become unresponsive. If there are some problems during the session, a teacher can always make the most of these glitches and turn them into opportunity by asking other students either to type or explain what’s going on (which is a great speaking practice).

BRITANNIA: Is it possible to earn any money being an on-line teacher? Or do you do it only as an advertisement for your f2f classes?

MARINA PETROVIĆ: I must admit that at first I thought it was impossible. I learnt a lot by trial and error and I gradually started earning enough to finance my sites and even short city breaks each year. In January I took a course in online marketing, and it made a huge difference. My sites soared to the first page in Google, and now I am convinced teachers can earn more than a decent living by teaching online.

The trick is to do the best you can – absolutely the best, as if you were teaching a lesson for yourself .

BRITANNIA: Why so? I mean, it is crucial that you always do the best you can, with all your students, but do you believe it’s especially important in on-line teaching?

MARINA PETROVIĆ: I think it is more difficult to achieve this kind of “excellence” in online teaching. I’m afraid that teachers tend to make do with simple PPTs and teach in a linear fashion. Teaching online has many different “dimensions” and it is important to be aware of this fact and make the most of it.

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To be continued. See Part II.