How should we teach?

Teachers may develop their own method, following a particular theory of language, learning and teaching. They may constantly check, change and modify their teaching theory according to students’ reactions in practice. It's important to bear in mind that there's no one-size-fits-all method...

No theory is of any value unless it works in practice.
– Louis Pasteur –

What should we teach?

The decision on what to teach is a tough one, no doubt. We need to find a balance between what the government says we should teach (Diseños Curriculares and Núcleos de Aprendizaje Prioritarios), what we can teach considering our students, what we really believe we should teach and what publishers suggest through textbooks… OMG!

In this video I explore the idea that we should teach the small stuff, the big stuff and the real stuff.

What do you think about this? Feel free to leave your comments here ;)

World Environment Day in the EFL classroom

June 5 is World Environment Day. I consider myself quite green and try to help students understand how important it is to take care of our planet. June 5 is an important day in the EFL classroom every year. Our town, Gualeguaychú, is well-known for a movement against paper mills that are polluting our water and air. In addition, our education system encourages us to include Environmental Education as a cross-curricular content in teaching. 

For these three reasons: my own interest, the town where we live and what our government expects from us, I designed a sequence for my students of Heroes de Malvinas High School. The aims of the sequence were:

•          To become aware of the problems our environment goes through
•          To learn vocabulary related to the environment
•          To understand the importance of waste segregation
•          To enjoy a day outside the classroom

Activity 1: Connecting people to nature

We saw this video in order to activate prior knowledge

I asked students to think and, if possible, write down all the things from the video they were able to say in English. They knew words like water, fire, people, city, monkey, bird, elephant, fish, and many more.

Activity 2: Green mottos devoweled

I explained the reason why we were seeing that video. We talked about World Environment Day, its origin, and this year’s theme “Connecting people to nature”. I showed them some mottos written without the vowels, just consonants, like this:

WHN Y CNSRV WTR, Y CNSRV LF.

They had to guess what the motto was. When a student or pair of students had the answer, they came to the front and showed me what they had written. If it was right, I showed the answer to the rest of the group. As we saw the mottos, I isolated new vocabulary and wrote it on the whiteboard.

Activity 3: Waste segregation

I told students we were going to see a video about waste segregation and asked them to predict what it might say. They expected to find information about types of waste and the advantages of recycling.

After seeing the video, we checked predictions. We saw it again, this time pausing to analize it in detail. I isolated more vocabulary from the video and they took notes.

Activity 4: Field trip to Ecopark Gualeguaychú

The following week, we went to the ecopark in our town. We had a mini tour, in our mother tongue. Juliana was our guide. She explained that the ecopark is a waste segregation plant and she told us how it works. She helped us understand that waste is a serious problem and insisted that we should have separate containers at home and take them according to our town’s garbage collecting schedule. We also took a lot of pictures (see below)

Activity 5: WhatsApp revision time

Between the visit and the following lesson, I asked students to write down what they remembered about the ecopark. They came up with more detail than I had expected. They did this in their mother tongue. I used what they wrote to write questions about the ecopark, in order to use them in the final activity of the sequence.

Activity 6: Assessment game 

The following class after the visit we played a game about waste segregation, including information from the video and the field trip. These were the questions:

•          How many people work at the plant?
•          What time is the morning shift?
•          Who pays their salary in winter?
•          How long does it take for a pile of garbage to reduce?
•          How often is soil added to avoid bad smell?
•          What’s the Spanish name of the liquid produced in waste?
•          Who are in charge of separating glass?
•          Who are in charge of separating recyclable materials?
•          How long has the plant been operative?
•          How many years were the containment cells supposed to last?
•          Where did the people work before?

The game was simple. They worked in small groups. I gave them all the questions. They had 5 minutes to understand the questions and try to remember the information they needed to answer it. After that, each group had to choose one of the questions, in any order, and answer it. If the answer was right, they scored a point. If not, the question was available for any other group to answer.

Final reflections

I think this sequence was a way of teaching in connection to the real world, and that is what matters most to me. They learned a lot of vocabulary in context, which matters a lot to me, too. Besides, they enjoyed the visit and learned a lot about waste segregation and the environment through the use of authentic materials. We applied two of the basic principles of CLIL (content and language integrated learning): that language is used to learn as well as to communicate and that the subject matter determines the language needed to learn.

I´m very pleased with the experience :)

What about you? Do you have lessons or sequences "off the textbook"? How do you integrate the real world and authentic materials in your classroom? 

Acknowledgement

For the organization of the field trip: Andrea Takats from Universidad Autónoma de Entre Ríos (UADER) and María de los Ángeles Gómez from Secretaría de Medioambiente de Gualeguaychú. 

The four elements of reading comprehension

It happened in my English class at Héroes de Malvinas high school, a couple of weeks ago. I had to introduce them to reading comprehension strategies and I decided to try something new. I went to school with four objects in a bag and started taking them out, one by one.  

Disney - Club Penguin

First, I took out a pair binoculars. 

I emphasized the fact that binoculars can help them see something from a distance. And that’s exactly how they should “see” the text before they start reading. Seeing the text from a distance means that they have to look at it before they read words. They should look at the heading and layout. They need to see the whole and try to identify the type of text it is. They can have a look at pictures and graphs that may come with it. Is it an article from a newspaper? Does it look like a definition from the dictionary? Is it a letter? A poem? A recipe? We must help students learn to read different kinds of texts and as authentic as possible. Knowing the kind of text they’re going to read helps a lot.

Disney - Club Penguin

Second, I took a camera out of the bag. 

I emphasized the fact that cameras are great to get the whole, and also focus on something in particular. This is what comes next when reading a text. They need to look at the words, but not read yet. They can identify the words they know and check for words that are repeated or similar to their mother tongue. They should try to see if those words relate to a semantic field and, thus, decide what the text is about, the topic. The text we read in class at high school that day was about the walk-out demonstration known as #NiUnaMenos. Students were able to understand many words before reading: gender violence, crime, femicide, legislation, law, statistics and Argentina. They knew they were going to read about femicide in Argentina and the role of legislation. Identifying the semantic field of a text is a must.

Disney - Club Penguin

Third, I took a magnifying glass out of the bag. 

This shows that, after having a look at the text from a distance and in general, they need to focus on the specifics. They need to know what each paragraph is about. This is the moment when they can focus on proper names, numbers, quotes, punctuation, italics, bold type, acronyms and other details that may help them understand without a dictionary. This is when they go deeper into the text. That day, we went over each paragraph together and they managed to say what the main idea was. And they did so quite fast and without using the dictionary, except for only one word. I have the feeling that, most of the time, most of us jump to this moment too soon. We start reading or ask students to read texts before being aware of the type of text they are reading and what the text is about.

Disney - Club Penguin

Finally, I took a mirror out of the bag. 

This time I encouraged them to relate the text to themselves, to what they know about the subject, to what it means to them. It is necessary to teach our students to relate texts to prior knowledge, to associate, to compare and to go beyond what is written. What they know about a topic will help them understand vocabulary they don’t know, this is how they can infer much of the meaning of the text.

When we design reading comprehension activities for our students, we need to focus on these four moments of reading. We need to ask them to identify the type of text they are going to read, the topic of the text, the main ideas, the specific ideas, the language and grammar, and we also need to ask them to relate what they read to what they know. We may not be able to do everything with every text, but we must make sure they understand that reading is much more than just decoding and looking up in a dictionary.

Most ELT books deal with these moments: prediction, activation of prior knowledge or schemata, top-down and bottom-up processing, skimming and scanning, pre-reading and post-reading. I thought the metaphor would be more suitable for my students, to help them be aware of the process and become strategic readers.

What about you? How do you deal with reading comprehension in the classroom? 

Productive skills revisited

It is always a good idea to read about teaching skills... Revisit and rethink...

Harmer (2007) describes a general procedure to deal with productive skills. In the lead in stage, we engage students with the topic and activate prior knowledge. Then we set the task, i.e., we explain what they are going to do. We may need to demonstrate, by showing a model text if it is writing, or by acting out a dialogue o listening to it if it is speaking. We need to make sure they know what they have to do and they have the tools they need, such as, useful expressions, specific vocabulary and basic knowledge of the language function and type of text they need to produce. It is a good idea to ask students to repeat the instructions back to us to check they know what they have to do. This could be done in L1 if necessary. Once they have started, we need to monitor the task. We can go around the class, listening to what they say or looking at what they do. When they have finished, we give task feedback. This will help students know how they are doing and improve. It is important to focus on the content of the task and not just on the language; on the achievements and not just the mistakes. Rubrics are valuable to assess productive skills. Finally, we may move on to a task-related follow-up. 

Successful communication, both oral and written, depends to some extent on knowing certain rules. These rules include knowing how and when to take turns or the difference between an email to a friend and one to a manager. They also include more general sociocultural rules, such as how men and women address each other or how to address people who are older or about our age.

When speaking or writing, students will come across difficulties, especially when they do not know the words they need. To solve the difficulty, they might employ the following strategies (Harmer, 2007, p. 277)

• Improvising: Try any word they can come up with, hoping that is right.
• Discarding: Abandon the part that they cannot express.
• Foreignising: Use a word or phrase in L1 and pronounce it as if it were L2, hoping that it will be equivalent to the meaning they wish to express. 
• Paraphrasing: Express the meanings with definitions or comparisons.

In order to help students, activities should be planned ahead, anticipate the difficulties they might come across and supply key language to ensure they can cope with the task. It is important to remember that language that has been presented recently is not often available for instant use in spontaneous conversation. There is a time-lag between meeting new language and being able to use it.

Speaking

Speaking seems to be the most important skill of all; in fact, people who know the language are referred to as “speakers” of that language and when we ask people if they know a language we usually ask: “Do you speak English?”. Besides, many learners claim to be interested in learning to speak. This means they need to be able to pronounce correctly, use appropriate stress and intonation patterns and speak in connected speech. But that is not everything. They also need to speak in different situations and in different genres. They also need to know conversation strategies as well as survival and repair strategies.

Speaking events have many different purposes. The transactional function of speaking has as its main purpose to convey information and facilitate the exchange of goods and services; whereas the interpersonal function is about maintaining relationships. Besides, speaking can be interactive or non-interactive, planned or unplanned (Harmer, 2007). These distinctions are not absolute but they help when it comes to designing activities for the classroom.

Our challenge is to think of speaking activities that are successful. According to Ur (2009, p. 120-122) in such activities learners talk a lot, participation is even, motivation is high, and language is of an acceptable level. However, problems may arise such as inhibition, having nothing to say, low or uneven participation and the use of L1. To solve these problems, it is possible to use group work, base the activity on easy language, make a careful choice of topic and task to stimulate interest, give some instruction or training in discussion skills and keep students speaking the target language.

When students are not fluent, a way of getting them started is the use of dialogues as models for controlled practice. It is a traditional language-learning technique to learn brief dialogues and act them out. Although the technique has gone out of fashion in recent years, it is useful when students are beginners and when they don’t know enough English to speak freely or improvise. It is also suitable for shy and less confident students. Class plays, simulations and role play are good ways to get started. Teaching students fixed and semi-fixed expressions is also useful to get started.

Speaking activities include:

• Questionnaires: They are pre-planned and they help both questioner and respondent have something to say to each other. This may encourage the natural use of certain repetitive language patterns.
• Acting from script: Students act out scenes or dialogues.
• Prepared talks: Students can make a presentation on a topic. They are not designed for informal spontaneous conversation because they are prepared, they are writing-like. They should be encouraged to speak from notes rather than from a script.
• Communication games: Information-gap games, television and radio games, yes/no-question guessing games.
• Simulation and role-play: Students can simulate a real-life conversation and take on different roles.
• Making recordings: Students can work individually or cooperatively both in the process and the product of making a video or audio recording.
• Discussions and debates, ranging from formal, whole-group to informal, small-group interactions.

The first four are suitable for beginners. They are feasible and help get started.

Assessing students is hard, but it is worth the investment. Using rubrics and scales is a useful way of helping students know the criteria that will be used for assessment and thus they can try to improve to reach the highest score.

Writing

The objective of teaching writing in a foreign language should be to get learners to produce the kinds of texts an educated person would be expected to be able to produce in their own language. These may include personal stories, descriptions of a view or people, letters, book or film reviews, among others.

Giving students feedback on their writing is a controversial issue. It is hard to decide what to focus on: language, content, organization and other aspects that are involved in writing. Content is probably the most important thing, whether the ideas or events that are written are interesting and significant. Organization and presentation matter as well, whether the ideas are arranged in a way that is easy to follow and pleasing to read. Finally, we should focus on language use, whether the grammar, vocabulary, punctuation and spelling are of an acceptable standard of accuracy. “Many teachers are aware that content and organization are important, but find themselves relating mainly to language forms in their feedback, conveying the implicit message that these are what matters” (Ur, 2009, p. 170).

Language and grammar have to be corrected –we can agree on that– the problem is when and how. The correcting of language is part of the language instruction, but too much of it can be discouraging and demoralizing. Another question is whether to ask students to rewrite and, if so, whether to reread and correct all versions. Rewriting is very important because it reinforces learning but also because it’s an integral part of the writing process as a whole. However, if we ask them to rewrite, they can demand that we reread and correct their work. Correcting written work is time-consuming. One possible solution is to ask students to self-correct their work with a rubric or correct each other’s work. Peer-correction can be time-saving and although it does not replace teacher’s correction and evaluation, it may be a substitute for first-draft reading.

When teaching writing, it is important to help students understand that drafting, writing and reviewing are done in a recursive way. Thus, at the editing stage we may need to go back to the pre-writing phase and think again (Harmer, 2007).

It is necessary to make a distinction between writing-for-learning and writing-for-writing. An example of the first one, is to ask students to write sentence using a structure they just learned. This will help them remember the structure but it will not help them develop writing skills.

It is hard sometimes to get started with writing. Some ideas include: instant writing (dictating half-sentences which students have to complete) and parallel writing (using a text as guide and replacing some information).

Dealing with the productive skills is hard indeed. Learning what other teachers do about it can be inspiring and help us think of activities that are suitable for our groups. So, let's share our experiences! 

References

Harmer, J. (2007). Teaching language skills. The Practice of English Language Teaching (4ta ed., pp. 265-363). Harlow: Longman.
Ur, P. (2009). Teaching skills. A course in Language Teaching: Practice and theory (pp. 105-174). Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

The Teaching Formula

To talk about teaching, I like the following formula:

Someone + teaches + something + to someone + by a means + to an end

Someone refers to the teacher, though not always. Teachers have different teaching styles, different approaches to teaching and different personalities. However, good teachers share some characteristics such as knowledge of the subject they teach, variety of techniques and resources, consistency, fairness, sense of humor, patience... and the list may go on forever.

I recommend two texts on this:

• Ten Characteristics of a Good Teacher by Patricia Miller.

• Common characteristics of good teaching by UNESCO and Scheerens.

Teaching refers to approaches and methods, as well as teaching as decision making. To teach is to make decisions and to do so as a reflective practice. In order to understand what teaching is nowadays, it is necessary to learn about methods that were used in the past -and may still be used- to have a more global view on the subject. From teacher-centered to student-centered, from inductive to deductive, from focus on grammar to focus on communication... another list that may go on forever.

Two texts worth reading are:

• The Teacher as a Decision Maker by Annie Fuller

• Towards Reflective Teaching by Jack C. Richards

Something refers to what we teach. We teach English, that’s clear. But it is necessary to elaborate on what we mean by “English”. It may mean pronunciation, vocabulary, grammar, skills, communication, as well as social conventions, values, habits, and one more list that may go on forever.

In this case, I recommend:

• Communicative Language Teaching Today by Jack Richards

• Communicative Language Teaching a conversation between Jeremy Harmer and Scott Thornbury

To someone refers to students, age groups, levels of English, learning styles, multiple intelligences. And it also refers to motivation and classroom management. Knowing your students will help you teach them. 

I'd like to share two texts on teaching with the student in mind:

• Unexpectedly interesting a post on this blog

• Catering for Learner Differences: an article in Humanising Language Teaching Magazine

By a means refers to how we teach, the techniques we can use in the classroom, the use of ICT, material design, innovation, assessment, and many other tools that we can use to improve students’ learning... a never-ending list.

To stay up to date with teaching techniques, to share experiences, to know what specialists are up to, I strongly recommend using social networks, like Twitter, and I also recommend taking MOOCs, webinars and anything that will keep you thinking, experimenting and reflecting.

To an end refers to the reasons why we teach English, especially in high schools. Focusing on the language as an object of study is not the same as focusing on the language as a means of communication. The purpose is different. That’s the big deal. When we teach a language communicatively we focus on what students can do with the language rather than what they know about the language. And being able to communicate is just one of the reasons why languages should be taught. it's also because it opens doors to new cultures and it helps reflect on our mother tongue.

Two texts we need to read as Argentinean EFL teachers:

• Núcleos de Aprendizaje Prioritarios (Foreign Languages) 

• Consejo General de Educación (Guidelines and documents issued by the Council of Education of Entre Ríos Province)

This Teaching Formula is a good reminder of how complex teaching is. The decisions involved in teaching go way beyond what textbook to use or whether to teach present simple before or after present continuous. It's a lot more than gap-filling and translation. It's tough but rewarding... I guess that's why we keep trying :)

I invite you to share interesting information about teaching EFL on Twitter using the hashtag #SedesTeach

@CarolaClerici

To dig deeper

Clerici, C. (2014). Catering for Learner Differences: MI, VAK and Other. Humanising Language Teaching Magazine, 16(1). Retrieved from http://www.hltmag.co.uk/feb14/less01.htm

Clerici, C. (2016, April 6). Unexpectedly interesting [blog post]. Retrieved from http://eflbycarola.blogspot.com.ar/2016/04/unexpectedly-interesting.html

Fuller, A. (2011). The Teacher as a Decision Maker. Pearson. Retrieved from https://www.pearsonhighered.com/assets/samplechapter/0/1/3/2/0132698161.pdf

Miller, P. (1987/2012). Ten Characteristics of a Good Teacher. English Teaching Forum, 25(1), 36-38. Retrieved from http://files.eric.ed.gov/fulltext/EJ971241.pdf

Richards, J. C. (1990). Towards Reflective Teaching. Teacher Training, Back Articles, 33. Retrieved from https://www.tttjournal.co.uk/uploads/File/back_articles/Towards_Reflective_Teaching.pdf

The New School (2013, July 22). Communicative Language Teaching: Jeremy Harmer and Scott Thornbury [video]. Retrieved from https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hoUx036IN9Q

UNESCO (2004). Common characteristics of good teaching. [post] Retrieved from http://www.unesco.org/new/en/education/themes/strengthening-education-systems/quality-framework/technical-notes/common-characteristics-of-good-teaching/

Teaching pronunciation with ICT

• To begin…

Let’s have a look at the TPACK framework to understand that ICT comes after pedagogical decisions. Technology in the classroom is welcome as long as we have a clear learning goal.

• To follow…

I invite you to revise the main questions around teaching pronunciation What to teach? Why? When? How? Have a look at the following Prezi.

• Now, the tools!

👉 To help recognize and remember sounds

Phonemic chart

The British Council offers an interactive phonemic chart. If you click on the symbols, you can hear the pronunciation. If you click on the little triangle, you can see examples of words that include the sound.

Phonemic chart by Adrian Underhill

There’s another interactive phonemic chart based on the one designed by Adrian Underhill. You can choose a symbol, hear the sound and an example of a word with that sound.

Pronunciation apps & websites

There are lots of applications and websites that offer exercises and quizzes to practice pronunciation. Explore them:

• Exercises and quizzes by ESL Tower
• 9 best online resources at Busyteacher.org
• Vocabulary quizzes and practice at Manythings.com
• Sounds, the pronunciation app by Macmillan
• Spell up by Google

👉 To extend listening time & practicing beyond the classroom

Most tools that will help our students with pronunciation are called text-to-speech, or TTS for short. Basically, we type in text and the application or website reads it aloud. Some are very good, others are still working on that. The pronunciation is usually accurate but they don’t have intonation patterns, which makes them good for sounds rather than whole sentences. Let’s see some examples:

Talk it

This is a text-to-speech application. It is very simple to use and it works without internet. If you type in text and click on “Talk it”, you can hear words or phrases pronounced in different ways. You can choose the personality of the speaker, speed, pitch and other features.

SitePal

This is a text-to-speech demo by Oddcast Technology. It is available online. It is very simple to use. If you type in text and click on “Say it”, you can hear words or phrases pronounced in different ways. You can choose the speaker’s gender and nationality; as well as other features.

Google translate

When using the translator, both the website and the app, you can click on the loudspeaker icon and hear sounds. It is also possible to say something aloud, as if dictating, and check whether the pronunciation is clear.

👉 To create with pronunciation

Audacity

This is an application to record and edit sound. It is free and quite easy to use. You can record your voice, add sound effects and combine with music or sounds. It is a very good option for story-telling with sound effects. It shows stress and intonation visually, which makes it a good aid for students to understand rhythm and pitch.

Vocaroo

This is a voice recorder available online. It is free and very simple to use. Once the audio is recorded, it can be downloaded as an MP3 file, sent by email or shared online.

Voki

This website offers talking avatars and you can also record your voice. It’s a good tool to listen to texts read aloud with different avatars and it can be used to record your voice to practice pronunciation and reading aloud. Sign-in is required.

That's all for now!

Feel free to share your experience here :)