English that Matters
Successful Classrooms
Do You Learn in a Straight Line?
Jan 4th
Language learning doesn’t happen in a straight line. It’s more like a complex web of scribbles. But if you take a peek into your language course, you’ll notice that your syllabus seems to move in a mostly straight line. It progresses, step by step, and quite seamlessly from chapter/unit 1 through to course end. Reviews and backtracking happen, but on a very defined basis. (Like at unit end for example.) But I don’t think we learn this way, it’s messier. Think about how you learn new words. You get exposed to one. You see it repeated in several circumstances. You figure out what it means. You come into contact with the word as it is repeated in a conversation or as you are reading something. Then, gradually, you begin to use it yourself. Was that in a straight line or was it like a scribble?
To be fair, some courses are able to provide this kind of repetition inside the unit – but what normally happens when you move on to the next one? Some courses I’ve worked with claim that they recycle previous course material into current content – but have you ever really noticed it much? In my experience that “recycling” is either A) so cleverly done that it just slips right by me (which would be a great thing, right?) or B) so subtle that neither teacher NOR student picked up on it. (That’s bad, right?)
So if we don’t learn English- or any other language- in a nice clean straight line, but in fact it looks more like scribbles with constant back tracking, repetition, regular exploration off the intended line of progress, what would that look like in a classroom environment?
And if constant repetition and recycling are so important, how should teachers do it inside the constraints of their classroom?
This post was inspired by a tweet from Kathy Sierra and I quote:
That is a crucial challenge, isn’t it? How to have lots of exposure and practice without it getting boring or repetitive?@KathySierra via twitter
If we need constant exposure and practice to improve, how can you build this into your classes? And how can you do it without boring yourself or your students to death?
Does your ESL class “Upgrade” your Students?
Dec 15th
English class, from a teaching perspective, usually flows around grammar rules, vocabulary words, listening exercises and course book readings. It’s a product focused environment. The other day on my way to a class, I heard an amusing announcement for a local English school. Their catch line: Come in for your free English lesson. 9/10 people who take our free class become regular customers.
The commercial then switches to why the 1 person didn’t return: in commercial one it’s because they were abducted by aliens. Commercial 2 is because they were hit by a car on their way back to become a regular customer.
Funny commercial – but like most ESL companies out there, it’s focused on the product. The English class or course you should buy. But how well do we help students REALLY become better because they used our service? One of my favorite authors posted this on twitter the other day:
“1 way to improve a product might not mean changing the product, but improving what the user is able to do with it. Upgrade user, not products.”
How do you do this in the ESL classroom? I see this as our “Holy Grail.” As a teacher, I think our job must be to ensure that our users are “upgraded” by using our service. But that’s an interesting challenge when your product is a service that requires a great deal of time commitment in order to see marked improvement.
A few ideas that we’ve been working on:
Give regular feedback on progress. We are launching a digital reporting system which lets our users know, on a monthly basis, a quick view of their development in Speaking, Reading, Listening, and Writing.
We also provide a time line meter – which graphically shows the number of hours each student has taken vs. the total number of hours required to meet course requirements.
We base our courses around the CEFR (Common European Framework of Reference) – and on each report card show our students what objectives they have already mastered, vs how many they have left before they graduate.
Sierra’s twitter post is really something difficult to put into practice when you place it into the context of the language classroom. “Upgrade your user.” What I have often found is that during the class – or a series of classes, the student is able to “upgrade.” They seem to temporarily acquire a new word, phrase, or grammar skill – but after leaving the classroom it’s like that upgrade didn’t take. It didn’t filter down to their day to day use of the language.
How to increase Assimilation
It’s not fire and forget. When you’re learning a language, and having it STICK, I think you need to prepare yourself for extremely focused repetition. Never be afraid to step back and recycle previous lesson material. That could be vocabulary words, Grammar exercises, etc. Never assume that just because your student has passed a test or finished a chapter that the material has been copied to their hard drive.
Question: Would it hurt to actually review completed CEFR objectives with your students and let them know that they have mastered that skill? Encourage students to notice their own abilities – perhaps it’s not as apparent to them as you may think.
Provide ample Kick Ass time in class: Make sure your students have time to show off what they can do. Develop presentations or activities which would allow students the opportunity to use their upgrades. (If you don’t use em, they’ll likely begin to disappear. )
How can you upgrade your students today? Think about it – and PLEASE comment!
Story telling=Great Fluency Development Activity
Jul 28th
So about three years ago my family moved into our brand new apartment. It was one of the most exciting moments we have had as a family. Up until that point, we had always been renting. What a cool feeling it is to have a mortgage – to know that the monthly payments you make each month actually go towards something that belongs to you. Not to the pocket of your landlord.
So our first day in our spot, my son (handsome guy in the photo) and I got ready for our first breakfast in our new pad – only to discover (and much to our dismay) that amid all the boxes and crazy trips back and forth between our old spot and our new one, that we had forgotten to pack our silverware and plates! What to do?
Well, we rooted around and found a few tupperware containers, and cooking utensils. (Why we brought this instead of the other stuff, I have no idea….) What a great time we had – totally reminded me of my camp days as a teenager when we’d have utensil meals. (Have you ever tried eating dinner with a spagetti server?)
But it was great fun, and a moment I will never foget with my son.
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So today I’ll be using this story to help my student work towards meeting a fluency goal – CEFR B1 Spoken Interaction – narrating a story while providing details and feelings.I’m going to show him the picture, and tell the story as I wrote it above. Then I’ll invite him to do the same. Tell me a story that has happened to you. Link it to a picture.
It’s so important to link classroom work with reality. I think the classes that impact the fluency development of my students the most are the ones that connect a student’s feelings and experiences to the language development process.
The more emotionally involved you become with a lesson you become, the more effective it will be. And that goes for both teacher and student!
Something to Think About:
- If you’re a teacher, what emotions could you pull out of yourself AND your students in your next lesson. Use those feelings to help you reach lesson goals.
- If you’re a student, when was the last time one of your classes made you really FEEL something with regards to the lesson? (Hopefully it wasn’t boredom!)
What is Effective Teaching?
Oct 25th
Inspired from a thought provoking post via elearnspace which pointed to another great post here: I’m sure I’m doing it wrong.
Darts
So here’s what I’m thinking after reading these: Is there a proven link between learning objectives and actual learning?
I also share the training which says that successful classes have learning objectives – you know the ones: “By the end of the class, Ss will be able to…” Or “Ss will be able to define…or explain…or demonstrate….” blah blah. I have to write these things out for every class. We even ask our teachers to do the same thing.
But do learning objectives lead to learning? Do they really make any difference to you – to your students?
From an organizational standpoint, I do notice that writing out a lesson plan helps me to think about where we’re going, and how we’ll get there. And that feeling of knowing, helps me feel like I’m performing my job correctly. But I can’t help but notice a few things…
When I plan out my lessons, the most successful rarely seem to actually follow the plan. My best classes – where both my students and myself seemed to connect deeply with what we were doing, seemed to flow quite freely from any plan I had laid out.
When classes are in flow – I’ve noticed that often the objectives that I had thought to be important before the class, seem to morph into others – or actually disappear completely.
When we march the objectives, and follow the plan, I sometimes feel like I’m stepping on something – that I’m pinning something down so that we can follow what my paper says we need to do. At the end of the class, I feel small satisfaction that we successfully followed our objectives – but did meaningful connection happen with the material we covered? Will my students be able to reproduce what we worked out OUTSIDE of the class? Will they be able to use the language we practiced on their own?
A comment on elearnspace rings true for me:
I think we need objectives. Adult learners seem to long for them because they want to see progress. They all seem to want to be able to measure what is known now, compared to what I knew before. I have to agree with Clark – the focus should be on the way you apply your knowledge or abilities in real life.
Possible Conclusion: objectives that work, and that lend to learning tend to be the ones that come out of a tight connection to application in real life. But as Shareski points out, the syllabus changes, and progress is often quite hard to measure.
Effective objectives, I think, are flexible creatures – and maybe should be influenced heavily by students, and shaped by a broad destination which places value on the journey.
“George, somehow you’ve got to know what you want people to be able to do at the end, before you start. I agree we over do it, or mis-do it. I like van Merrienboer’s taxonomy: two objectives, the knowledge you need, and the complex decisions you make with that knowledge. I focus on the latter, naturally, because that makes the former meaningful. I suggest you hit up Will Thalheimer, who talks eloquently about objectives: what works, what doesn’t. I’ll bet he’s got the research you want ‘to hand’.
Posted by: Clark Quinn at October 24, 2008 10:57 AM”