The Problem of Empathy

I've been very quiet of late on the old Twittering and Blogging front because I have taken myself off to the UK for a little while to teach on a Pre-sessional. I thought that this would be a really good chance to find out how things are done EAP-wise in the UK as compared to Ireland, as well as stretching myself as a teacher. So far, it's been an absolutely fantastic experience. My colleagues are all wonderful (as tends to be the case in ELT), the course is really well organised and the facilities are excellent. As I had expected, I've been learning tons from looking at how the course has been put together and then discussing how to approach it with my fellow teachers.

On top of all that, though, I've learned perhaps even more from the students themselves and getting a little taste of what life must be like for them. Back in Dublin, I have an apartment, a car, friends, family and a routine. Over here, I've none of that. As with my students, I'm living in shared dorms, struggling with how to set up a bank account and away from what I know. Yes, the culture clash of being Irish in the UK is not nearly the same as being say, Japanese in the UK, but it has helped me get a better appreciation of how overwhelming it all must be for students. And that's before you get to the academic side of things.

To get a sense of what that must be like, I decided that I would complete the same assignments that they have to do. A lot of this was pre-reading for class discussions which I was able to manage handily enough. But the big thing is the 2,000 word essay. I chose developments in EAP as my topic, thinking it would be fairly easy and quite interesting. I was right on the second count, way off on the first. Writing a referenced, 2,000 word essay is tough. If, like me, it's been a while since you were in university, I'd recommend giving it a go. I've found it easier to explain things to students, I've learned a lot about my field and I've picked up some handy tools for referencing.

I've also given up saying stuff like "students don't know how to critically evaluate". I don't really see this as some independent skill that you can learn and apply across the board. To do this, you have to know a lot about the subject. For most of my reading on this essay, I'm nodding in agreement. Only after reading a ton of articles can I start to form my own line of thought. And I'm reading in my first language. We still talk about criticality in the classroom, not so much as an abstract concept or skill, but rather how to critically engage with the particular subject they're working on.

On a more general, abstract note, I've found myself thinking about empathy quite a bit whilst working over here. The title of this post refers to a book by the philosopher and Catholic saint, Edith Stein. I studied this book as part of my masters in philosophy nearly 15 years ago. It came back to me whilst writing this post (a chap called Kris McDaniel has a very good overview of the book here). Essentially (I hope), Stein's idea is that we recognise another person, not simply as a physical thing, but as an individual person, an I just as we are an I. Stein's objective in exploring the concept of empathy was phenomenological, mine in mentioning it, simply a way of stitching an overarching theme to this post.

If I look for connections between successful teachers, empathy seems to be a commonality (as a side note, this would be part of the argument as to why multi-lingual language teachers are especially helpful to their students). I haven't been able to find a lot on the value of teacher empathy (although there does seem to be a lot on how to teach empathy), but I believe that it is a valuable asset for EAP teachers. The problem is that our empathy can wane a bit as the gap between the present and our former student life widens. That's why a good kick up the backside, as I've been getting this last couple of weeks, is no bad thing. And it can be a self-administered kick - all that needs to be done is to loudly proclaim (it has to be loud so you can't back out) that you will stand shoulder to shoulder with your students during the assignment (unless it's a bloody learner journal! They're on their own for that one).

*I should also point out how amazing the Twitter community is - I did a shout out for sources for my EAP essay and got lots of really helpful responses.

The Importance of Being Native

I think here in Ireland, we have a strange relationship with the English language. In one sense, there is a sense of regret that English has replaced Gaeilge as our first language. We lament the teaching of Gaeilge in schools and marvel at how other countries manage to get their kids speaking different languages by the time they leave school. We sprinkle the "cupla focal" in our speech but I believe there is a real sadness for many of us that we can't converse in the language of our (very recent) ancestors.

And it is perhaps this regret that makes us particularly proud of our brand of English - Hiberno English. We delight in the fact that we have different words for things; words like press for cupboards or rashers for bacon.

And our grammar is different too. Instead of the present perfect form (e.g. I have eaten), many of us use the "be+after+ING form" (e.g. I'm after eating). I don't know if it is nationwide but in Dublin, you'll often hear someone say I do be tired on Fridays when someone from the UK might be more inclined to say I'm usually tired on Fridays (Stan Carey has a nice piece on this grammatical form here). These constructions are leftovers, grammar structures that were translated from the Gaeilge and hung on as the language went into decline.

And we are proud of our writers - Wilde, Joyce, Shaw, Yeats, Beckett, Heaney. We tell visitors that the English may have invented the language but we took it and made it better. I grew up hearing this stuff and it is impressive that such a small country has 4 Nobel Prize winners for Literature. But still, you'd wonder. Would we swap one of those Nobel prizes for bilingualism?

So, I suppose the point I'm trying to make is that we have mixed emotions when it comes to speaking English. This gets even more complicated in the world of English Language Teaching. Because of our history, because we lost our native language, we get to sit at the head of the table as native speakers (although Thailand gave us a bit of a scare a few years ago, before letting us back into the club).

You would think that considering this tangled history with the English language, our institutional failure to teach our native language and the massive levels of emigration from this country, we would be well placed to challenge notions of what it is to be a native or non native speaker of English. That we would be sensitive to those who have left their homes and are speaking English out of economic necessity. But I worry that this is not the case. I worry that we may be even more protective of the importance of "nativeness" by virtue of the fact our own doesn't sit so comfortably.

Many jobs here still look for native only teachers. I'm not going to name and shame but with a dodgy Internet connection whilst sitting on a train I found 4 in 5 minutes. As many other people have pointed out (here, here, here, here and here), this is discrimination - excluding someone possibly qualified for the job on the basis of something over which they have no control. If we take the Braj Kachru "Inner Circle" view of what constitutes a native speaker, then these ads are effectively saying Americans, British, Australians, New Zealanders, Canadians and Irish only. Obviously there are many more countries that can be considered native speakers, but I think putting it like this helps to highlight the discrimination involved in native only advertisements.

So, in a way, the word native helps to cover up some discriminatory hiring policies. It is a lot easier to say "I just want native English speakers" than to say "I just want Irish people". I can imagine the people who post these ads might object to the accusation of discrimination and say that they are simply responding to market demand. Spanish kids don't want to come to Dublin to learn English from a Spanish teacher. That would seem a reasonable position and suggest that the schools in question make these decisions based on their view of quality standards or concerns for the needs of their students. And yet one school advertising for natives only stipulates that no experience is required. Do Spanish kids want to come to Dublin to learn English from someone who has never taught before? Does "nativeness" trump all other considerations?

It seems strange to me that a large chunk of the ELT world holds on to the notion that students want native teachers (rather than the notion that students want teachers who will help them learn as quickly as possible). Why is it that in this one area, we let a perception of what students want dictate our approach when in everything else, we claim to know best ("No, no, no, put away your dictionaries - it's better if you guess the word from the context")?

The troubling thing about this glorification of the native is that it creates a horrible dichotomy. The majesty of the native requires the humbling of the non-native. Silvana Richardson argues that we need to move away from the term "non-native". The addition of a negative prefix to people who have successfully learned a language to a very high level (and, as is the case in Ireland, are brave enough to leave their homes to work in a foreign country) seems perverse. Would anyone be comfortable with their job description including a negative? It suggests a lack where really there should not be one. Would native mono-lingual English teachers be happy if they were referred to as "English teachers who have never done what they are trying to get you to do"? But even that wouldn't be a fair comparison, because at least they could do something about it. The non-native title is a permanent exclusion.

This is not exclusively a problem in Ireland. I have heard stories from around the world of teachers being excluded from jobs because of their nationality. But the world is changing. Most English conversations today are between people for whom English is their second (or third, or fourth) language (the world of Tennis is a great illustration of this - look at how Wimbledon, this bastion of "Englishness" is populated by international tennis players all communicating together through the one language). Jeremy Harmer argues that "the old ‘learn-to-speak-English-like-a-native’ trope of the middle of the twentieth century is long long gone". 

Instead of focusing on an insensitive and anachronistic view of English language speakers, Ireland has a small enough ELT industry (on the cusp of significant change if school closures and Government promises of reform are to be believed) that it can focus on a far more equitable dichotomy - good teachers and non-good teachers. The first step would be to get rid of these native only ads and see where to go from there.

Halfbaked idea - Day 1

I've never been one to shy away from enthusiastically embracing a barely digested idea that I overheard someone talking about...once...a while ago. Considering that I heard both Jeremy Harmer and someone else whose name I can't remember but who looked very knowledgeable about these things talking about the book Breaking Rules by John Fanselow (as well as skimming a synopsis of it here), I can safely consider myself an expert on the subject now!

Image via http://itdi.pro/itdihome/index.php

As I understood it, the idea is that you try to teach in different ways to how you would normally. So if you normally stand during the class, try sitting and see what happens. If you normally do vocabulary first, do it second.

Considering that we are coming to the end of a very long term, I thought I would give it a try. Before a class, I will think of one typical thing that I do frequently in class and try to do the opposite. (As I write this, I'm struck by how reality TVesque/wacky/awful this sounds - like I'm pitching a story to a dead-eyed Jim Carrey. Apologies if this is the most banal post you read this week, but I'll plough on...)

So the thing that I do in class is make jokes, self deprecating remarks or funny comments. I'm not quite sure what the opposite of that is, but for my lesson last week I decided that I would very consciously not make any jokes in class.

If I think back to when making jokes or funny comments was a conscious decision, my rationale might have been that it would help students relax, that it might make the lesson more enjoyable, and, quite needily, that it might make students like me and my lesson more. Of course, like those learner errors we hear about in CELTA courses, the habit becomes fossilised. Now, I do this simply because that is what I do.

So, in this class, I did none of that. These are my observations (I didn't think to ask students if they had noticed any difference).

• By being conscious about this one aspect of my teaching, I was also far more conscious of other aspects. I think this made me more attentive to my students and what was happening in the lesson. This might not have been the case if I were trying to change something more challenging. Not making jokes simply required the resisting of a temptation every so often. Perhaps something that required far more attention might have resulted in me being a bit less attentive in class. 
• I think there is a competitive edge to making jokes. I went to an all boys school, have only brothers and play a lot of football - I'm not sure if it is international, but Irish men compete to be the funniest. I wouldn't like to think that I am taking that into the classroom and also nice to give students the space to be funny or make quirky comments.

That's pretty much it to be honest. I don't think it made a huge difference to the lesson as really this is only a very small element to my teaching. Still, it was very interesting to challenge this one aspect.

Would be very curious to hear if other teachers have similar fossilised habits/rules that might be worth breaking.

Jeremy Harmer in Dublin

I have just come back from a fantastic talk by Jeremy Harmer. Essentially the talk was about the main changes in the ELT world since the publication of the first edition of The Practice of English Language Teaching in the early 1980s to today (when the book is in its fifth edition).

Some of the key changes he explored were the developments in technology (he interestingly, and to some dismay from sections of the audience, suggested the interactive whiteboard may go the way of the fax machine - for shameless link to my own post on whiteboards, please see here), the growing number of non-native teachers (he very passionately argued that the distinction is not a valid one - that a really good language teacher is a multi-lingual teacher, irrespective of nationality - lovely to see someone so esteemed arguing the case for equal footing for non-native English teachers; echoes a lot of Marek's work in this area) along with a discussion of the various approaches, ideologies and trends that have come along in the last thirty years.

The talk was held in the teacher's club in Dublin, a venue that has seen a lot of great talks over the years (doesn't seem to get as much use of late, unfortunately). After an epic day of correcting and spreadsheet wrangling, I found the talk uplifting and I have been trying to put my finger on why exactly that was. Yes, Jeremy Harmer is an excellent speaker and he covers a really wide range of very interesting topics. But I think there was more to it than that. I am not sure if it was an overt message, but it seemed to me that the purpose of the talk was to assert the value of the teacher - that despite the changes he outlined, the need for enthusiastic and passionate teachers remains.

For instance, he spent a huge chunk of the talk describing his observations of teachers from around the world, teachers who were motivating students and delivering well thought out, engaging lessons. And as a methodologist, he argued that it was his job to observe teachers like these and report back on the good practice he observes. So in essence, what I took from it was, that as teachers, we have so much to learn from observing (and talking to) each other. And it was this message that I found very, very uplifting.

Extensive Reading - playing the numbers game

On an average week, I would probably read about a dozen 250 word essays. That's about 564 a year. So over the last 7 years, I've read....3,948 essays. And not just read; I've corrected the life out of them. The potentially dispiriting thing is that it seems like they never really get any better. If it were the same person writing all those essays, then of course you'd be worried. But those 3,948 essays are the work of hundreds of students - students who improve and move on, replaced by students who need to improve to move on. So in the halfway house that is the classroom, I've been trying to think of ways to "do" writing better.

What I'm thinking now is that I have to get those numbers up. 

At the same time, the problem I often find with students' writing is either a lack of vocabulary or a lack of ideas on a relevant topic. So, naturally, I want to get the quality up too.

If you follow Stephen Krashen on Twitter, you'll know that he posts a lot of his articles for free on his website, Krashen writes a lot on the topic of extensive reading. The idea is that tons and tons of self selected reading helps language acquisition. A bit of a wander around google (scholar) throws up some interesting free articles like this and this. Scott Thornbury has some interesting points here about extensive reading and how on its own, it isn't enough. To learn new vocabulary just from extensive reading, you need to come into contact with the word multiple times - some form of reinforcement is needed. Thornbury advocates dictionary usage as a way to top up extensive reading (from a vocabulary acquisition point of view). (NB: In this post, Thornbury mentions the 96% figure I've come across once before - apparently, this is the amount of words in a text you need to know to be able to guess the meaning of the ones you don't).

I'd guess, like many teachers, I am quite attracted to the idea of extensive reading (especially when you get to do stuff like this great idea from BALEAP conf - everyone brings a book to class, including teacher; 10 minutes of reading time, then chat about it.....sorry, would love to credit, but I can't track down the source of this great idea. Please let me know if you do. Addendum - found it! - Greg Strong talking about Fluent Reading posted by BALEAP) My concern is the self selected bit - my students have to write on a load of topics, topics that they might never be particularly motivated to read about of their own volition. The other thing is that many do not read a lot in their native language.

So in terms of getting them to write more (with hopefully more vocabulary and more developed/relevant ideas), I've been trying a bit of guided extensive reading (with a bit of listening/watching thrown in as well). Strictly speaking, this isn't exactly extensive reading - it is probably better defined as "doing a good bit more reading than you would usually do (about topics that you may not normally read about)"(c) :)

I've been trying this approach for the last month and so far it has been interesting. It is nothing revolutionary, but... 

Basically, a week before the class, I email students with the following instructions:

1. The topic for next week's writing class is ......(insert topic here)
• Read this article and highlight any relevant vocabulary (insert link here)
• Read this (different) article and highlight any relevant ideas (insert link here)
2. (Listening) Here is a Ted.com talk on this topic (insert link here)
• What are the speaker's 5 main points?
• Look at the transcript - any relevant vocabulary?
• If you were in the audience, what one question would you ask?
3. (Reading) Here is an article on this topic (insert link here)
• What is the overall point the writer is trying to make?
• What are the main ideas? What examples does the writer use?
• Does the writer talk about effects (e.g. as a result....consequently....)
• Do you notice any vocabulary that you found in the listening or other articles?
4. (Writing) Now, after doing all that reading and listening, write 250 words on the question (insert a question related to the topic here).

This is an example that we did a while ago. Here in Dublin, we had some bus strikes so the students missed class. As the concept of trade unionism was not a familiar one to them (and having seen this topic come up in an EAP exam in the past), I thought it might be of interest.

Trade Unionism example

(photo taken from journal.ie)

Reading (approx. 30 minutes)
Use google to find the answers to these 4 questions. Write a few lines to answer each question. We will discuss in  class. 
1.       What is a trade union?
2.       What are the advantages of a trade union?
3.       What is a picket?
4.       Why did Dublin Bus go on strike? 

This video might be a good place to start https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dNb0VYyfarc 

Listening/Speaking (approx. 30 minutes) 
Watch this Ted talk. The talk is about peaceful protests and is very interesting. http://www.ted.com/talks/will_potter_the_shocking_move_to_criminalize_non_violent_protest 
1.       Write 3 sentences to summarise the talk
2.       Write one question that you would have asked if you were at the talk
3.       Note 5 new words/phrases

Writing (approx. 1 hour)
Write a 250 essay based on this question. 

Workers in essential services (e.g. police, doctors, bus drivers) should not be allowed to go on strike. It causes too much inconvenience to the majority of people. Do you agree or disagree? 

Read these two webpages as support
http://www.independent.co.uk/voices/why-more-people-should-go-on-strike-strikes-are-a-measure-of-our-freedom-1587089.html
http://www.debate.org/opinions/is-it-ok-for-teachers-to-go-on-strike-or-should-they-employ-other-means

The end result as I see it is that students are writing more than they did, they are reading a good bit more than they did. Are their essays any better.....
  

BALEAP - Sunday

Here are my notes/thoughts/acts of gluttony from day 3 of the BALEAP conference.

BALEAP breakfast, part 2

The key to taking full advantage of the buffet breakfast is to sit alone. Time spent talking and worrying if you have food on your face is time not spent eating. Granted, I may have appeared anti-social but I got to eat the following:

• 1 bowl of sugar puffs (they still exist!)
• 1 bowl of muesli
• 2 vegetarian sausages
• 2 vegan sausages
• 2 fried eggs
• 3 hash browns
• Tomatoes
• 4 slices of toast (2 brown, 2 white)
• orange juice
• coffee
• 3 pastries
• yoghurt
• banana
• apple

Emphasising the A and not the E in EAP - Magdalen Ward Goodbody

This talk was an overview of the development of the Academic Skills Centre at the University of Bath. As such it was a nice companion talk to the one by Mark Ingarfield. Essentially, the Academic Skills Centre has moved from being a peripheral part of the university to an embedded centre for all students (not just international ones) who need help improving their ability to use Academic English. Again, fascinating from an Irish perspective to see how these centres have successfully integrated into universities.

Talk also included this slide going through what the nice people at Bath mean when they say academic skills. 

Writing your own: How to create effective EAP materials - Julie Moore

This was an excellent workshop by Julie Moore who is a lexicographer and materials writer. Despite suffering from a severe case of BALEAP belly, I found this to be one of the more inspiring talks of the weekend (incidentally, this was also the opinion of other delegates who later breached bathroom etiquette to praise the talk).

Julie started by asking how many people create their own materials. The majority responded in the affirmative, allowing Julie to make the point that despite the wealth of materials, teachers still feel compelled to create their own stuff for class. Whether it is the lack of specific, relevant materials or an urge to be creative, the fact is that for many of us, creating original material is part of our job. The workshop was about how to do that better.

I tweeted several photos of slides from the workshop here, here and here.

In no particular order, here are some of the ideas from the workshop:

• Establish a very clear aim.
• Be critical - do your materials achieve that aim.
• Abstracts are a great source for intensive reading.
• Don't overload the material. You might see a dozen things you could do with a text but you have to be ruthless and narrow that down.
• Start with the aim and then find materials rather than the other way around.
• Think about what students will take away from the class. 
• Get someone to have a look at them.
• Always acknowledge the source.
• Think about staging your activities. For instance, adding a direction like "give reasons for your choice" adds a bit more complexity for Ss so consider at what stage to have simple and more complex tasks.

Innovating instruction: specificity and English in the disciplines - Ken Nyland

Looked at research into conventions in different disciplines. The idea that different disciplines use different structures/language/techniques and that Ss should be exposed to this, encouraged to notice the specific norms of their discipline. EAP is about equipping students with a new kind of literacy - not about topping up deficiencies in their language. This echoed the theme in many talks that EAP needs to be more specific to the discipline of the Ss. 

A very interesting talk that zipped by without me taking decent notes. Sorry. 

BALEAP packed lunch

Unbelieveable! Sent on my way with a cheese salad sandwich, crisps, fruit, water and flapjack which were enjoyed as I bounced my way back across the Irish Sea aboard this little beauty.

BALEAP - Saturday

Here are my notes/observations/impressions from day 2 of BALEAP. Again, please let me know if I get anything wrong or if I miss the point. I only slept 5 hours the Friday night so the quality of my notes deteriorated as the day went on. 

BALEAP breakfast

• All you can eat buffet including both vegetarian and vegan sausages! As I was sitting with the Sheffield crew, I wanted to make a good impression so showed some restraint
• muesli
• 2 vegan sausages
• scrambled eggs
• 1 hash brown (afraid to ask for 2)
• 2 pieces of toast
• orange juice
• croissant
• coffee
• yoghurt
• Don't feel I made the most of that buffet

Listening and Reading in L2 academic contexts - Dr Catherine Walter

• 4/3/2 idea. Read as much as you can in 4 minutes. Then try again in 3. Then try again in 2. 
• This will help to build more fluent reading.
• Translation and back translation - translate from English to your language and then back again. (remember doing something like this in class with the Vincent Price part of Thriller)
• Dispelled myths about "good readers"
• good readers guess meaning from context
• no, good readers know lots of vocab
• implication - teach vocab and vocabulary systems, not how to guess from context
• Talked about pronunciation. Often, if we mispronounce, we have a chance to correct. But if we don't hear/understand, we might not get a second chance (esp in lecture). So makes more sense to teach received pronunciation (i.e. to teach pronunciation in terms of listening to it, rather than devoting all the time to making sure Ss get the pronunciation spot on)
• Implication - do more dictation work in class. 
• Ss much less likely to abandon initial hypothesis when listening. So for example, if they hear "way" first, they are more likely to stick to that, even if later evidence suggests it was actually "weigh". 
• Ss much more likely to replace unknown words with known words.
• Paul Nation got mentioned a lot

Capitalizing on technology to promote learner autonomy in a writing course - Prof. Esther Boucher-Yip

• Blended learning model. 
• Used Blackboard to take grammar out of the classroom
• Students had access to grammar exercise/practice online.
• Used free stuff for these grammar resources
• Advocates looking at your class and thinking, what can you get out of the class and have them doing at home
• Online work supports classroom work

Delivering the discipline-specific pre-sessional that you are responsible for - Karen Nicholls and John Wrigglesworth

• Make the course as ESAP as possible. 
• Graduateness - boil down topics - filter out stuff that at least one student in the class wouldn't need as a graduate. So you are left with stuff that will be applicable to all in the class (e.g. stuff about research)
• They all have a book that they bring to their class - a book that is relevant to the genre that they wish to write in. This is their resource in the class relevant to their area. This is the meat for the skills that they work on, individual to each.
• Record your own lectures. The speaker talked about how he creates lectures himself so that they can be more tailored to Ss needs.

Teacher anxiety and content involved EAP - Dr Justin Alam

• 3 types of ESAP teacher
• 1 - avoids the content. Literary type. Instead of content, teaches skills (e.g. note taking, writing). Avoids anxiety by not dealing with content, bouncing questions back to students when they come up.
• 2 - regrets they can't always expand on answers. Would like to know more content.
• 3 - the model student. Tries to know as much as possible about the topic. Behaves like the model student, helping the students in this way. Sits in on content classes. Sometimes explains things that are not covered by lecturer. 

Exploiting corpora to address the vocabulary needs of Business Students - Andrew Preshous

• Students know "customer" but not the many collocations that go with it (e.g. "customer base")
• Mentioned BAWE and Sketch Engine
• Good for targeting subject specific vocabulary to teach Ss
• Outlined many guided discovery tasks (here, here and here) that can be used with words from BAWE

BALEAP Lunch

• All you can eat platters. Sat with very nice and knowledgeable people from University of Liverpool and Essex. Contributed very little to the conversation due to the following:
• cheese salad sandwich (2 quarters)
• egg salad sandwich (1 quarter)
• tuna salad sandwich (1 quarter)
• 2 mini vegetarian quiches
• 2 vegetarian samosas
• 2 vegetarian bahjis 
• 2 cream cakes
• water (important)
• coffee

Improving tutor feedback on online academic writing courses for postgraduates - Jill Northcott and Pauline Gillies

• Feedback is a social act
• Therefore, feedback to students on their writing should be social. Not a clinical identification of their errors - instead try to engage with what they have written.
• Engagement can be motivating for both teacher and student
• Talked about grounded theory - I know very little about that so if anyone could suggest further reading or expert grounded theory bloggers/tweeters to follow, that would be great.
• Scaffold writing assignments by giving 3 sources for an initial writing assignment

An integrated approach to EAP administrative support - Mark Ingarfield

• Behind the scenes at University of Liverpool
• Talked about points of pressure in the year - important that these are highlighted and prepared for so that staff on both sides (academic and administrative) are aware of each other's burdens and are kind to one another.
• Talked about integrating the EAP centre into the systems of the university. 
• The EAP centre and pre-sessional students are income generating. 
• Lot for Irish universities to take from this talk. A vision of how things are done in the UK and perhaps, how things could be done in Ireland.

Gala Dinner (preceded by power nap)

• Slap up meal in a suitably glamorous location
• (additional mash potatoes requested and received)
• Table quiz (did not win)
• Table quiz quibble - the question "What speed does the DeLorean need to reach to travel through time?" should not be multiple choice. 
• Dance floor annihilated - did not see that coming