Our approach to adult learners needs to be quite different from teaching younger learners, and even teenagers. In my post for OUPELTGlobalblog.com, here, I look at how we can use the life experience of adults to provide more motivating and engaging lessons.
I also recently presented at BESIG in Munich on how the principles of adult learning, or andragogy, can be applied to teaching Business English, especially as the skills required in the workplace change so rapidly.
Filed under motivation, Uncategorized, Working with groups
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The inspiration for the recent #eltchat on lesson planning came largely from @michaelegriffin’s post 29 statements about lesson plans. It seems that people have strong views about lesson planning, with some advocating a pure ‘jungle path’ approach (to use Jim Scrivener’s term) and others seeing benefits in planning, though not necessarily in following a plan rigidly.
The chat (05/06/13) started with two main questions posed by @shaunwilden: Is planning the same as preparedness and do we need to plan at all?
Is planning the same as preparedness?
This thread was referring to a recent talk by Underhill and Maley at IATEFL
The summary of the talk: Teacher training has tended to focus on technical preparation, yet teachers often find themselves unprepared for the human unpredictability of real lessons. This workshop aims to open up discussion on the moment-by-moment improvisation which is at the heart of teaching, and to suggest ways of developing ‘preparedness’ for the unpredictable.
@teflerinha suggested that both preparation and preparedness were important, and @efl101 wondered if planning became preparedness with experience, and similarly @josayers commented that ‘planning some lessons moves us towards being more prepared for all lessons.’
Is planning something newer teachers need to do more than experienced teachers?
There was certainly something of a consensus that newer teachers needed to spend longer planning. For example @ OUPELTGlobal ‘When I was starting my career planning helped. With experience, I needed less planning.’
However, several people also felt that getting trainee teachers to plan in detail could be counter-productive. @harrisonmike commented ‘over planning can make you less prepared ‘it isn’t going as I planned PANIC’’ and that it was a problem that ‘minute by minute planning is indoctrinated in ITT.’ @Shaunwilden agreed that ‘training courses make teachers overplan to be honest ‘ and that ‘overplanning makes one less prepared and less flexible.’
On the other hand, @teflerinha pointed out that ‘planning in ITT serves a different function than planning in real life.’ ‘planning makes you think things through.’ And @shaunwilden added ‘It’s a way of showing a trainee can analyse language, has taken on board input etc.’ And @teflerinha again ‘To get teachers/trainees to think about why they are planning each stage and how it relates to the whole- and for observers to see that thinking.’
Many people felt it was a process novice teachers had to go through. For example, @OUPELTGlobal said ‘Yes, have to admit that all the planning I did helped in later years, but it didn’t feel great at the time.’ And @pjgallantry ‘you’ve got to know the ‘rules’ of a lesson, before you can bend/break them – hence why Lesson planning is important for new Ts..’
There was also a brief discussion about the value of scripting instructions. It was agreed that this can easily be taken too far (@efl101 had seen 5 hour lesson plan completely scripted), but that it could be useful for inexperienced teachers with lower levels (@harrisonmike)
@hartle said, as a very experienced teacher, ‘My plans maybe 5 lines, but still there, as a basis.’
Does writing a plan mean you have to follow it?
@jo_cummins: said ‘I always make a lesson plan. I don’t always follow it. I often don’t even look at it.’ This seemed to be an important point, that it might be the process of writing the lesson plan that was important, rather than having it as a crutch in the lesson, which might well end up going in a very different direction, in response to the students.
@shaunwilden gave an example of how aims and objectives might change, ‘e.g.you started thinking you were going to introduce language, and then on planning realise it’s more review.’
@OUPELTGlobal asked ‘@OUPELTGlobal: Does planning inhibit sts from “interrupting” the teacher? going off the plan?’
And @jo_sayers made the point that ‘predicting actual learning is much harder than we think and we are often wildly optimistic.’
@teflerinha responded ‘Totally agree, but still useful to have an idea what we’d like to achieve, and then be flexible..’
@pjgallantry added ‘you always have to factor in ‘Factor X’ into a LP – anything from Ss being unhappy over st to teacher having a screaming headache’
@TeacherAlan1 raised an important point, asking ‘Is anyone required to show their lesson plans to admin? Or require your teachers to show them to you? This might easily influence how much teachers feel they have to follow their plans.
But @michaelegriffin made the point ‘My current thought is that lesson plans only get in the way if we let them. Ss don’t feel blocked unless T blocks.’
Can students tell (or do they care) if you have a lesson plan?
@colm_smyth ‘I guess students can tell by structure of teacher’s board work, teacher’s composure and activity transition’
@michaelegriffin ‘I think teachers sense if a teacher is prepared and that may be based on having a lesson plan’
@rliberni ‘Do ss know when things are unplanned (as opposed to unstructured)? I think they probably do’
What about planning a series of lessons?
@teflerinha commented ‘What I really DON’T like is planning a series of lessons in advance, or using last year’s because can’t respond 2 what happens’
@oupeltglobal replied ‘I agree with that. Teacher should react to the students they have – different sts & different plans’
And @cioccas ‘Can’t plan far in advance when you’re constantly changing to meet changing needs in the class.’
Post lesson planning
@efl101 asked ‘how often do you analyse/review plan after lesson 2 compare what actually happened and why and what u can learn etc?
@shaunwilden answered: ‘I did in my first few years as a teacher but then sort of fell out of the habit of noting it down’ and @hartle ‘when I 1st started teaching I did a lot. Now, I analyse what happens in class more, interactions between stds, successes.’
@efl101 responded ‘same but think it would be interesting to see if there are patterns etc. but time often prevents proper reflection’
And a great point to conclude from @mstrep: ‘Good planning makes a good teacher. Ability to improvise and adaptability make a great one’.
Other useful links
@pjgallantry shared a great visual representation of all the factors which contribute to teacher’s input, students’ input and output.
He also referred to The Secret DOS ‘s excellent recent post on lesson planning, The map is not the territory, which I won’t summarise here, but which is well worth reading.
@muranava referred us to this post by Willy Cardoso
Another relevant post is Steve Brown’s A case for anti-planning.
Dale Coulter’s post on lesson skeletons and retrospective planning
Scott Thornbury and other luminaries on the IDTI blog on How important is lesson planning?
And (if I may) my post ‘What’s the point of planning?’
Finally, @michaelegriffin gave us this link to Tessa Woodward’s book on planning lessons and courses, which he says ‘I did not enjoyed this book the first 3 times I looked at it but now love it’
Recently listening to Cecilia Lemos’ great talk on recasting as a form of correction, and how she had decided it was not always very effective, I started thinking again about teacher echo.
Recasting is repeating an utterance which is incorrect, in the correct way, hoping that the student will notice it. As a technique, it has its roots in the ‘strong’ communicative approach, and is based on what parents tend to do with young children, as they are learning. However, there is quite a lot of evidence that students rarely do notice recasts. For example, Havranek (1999) recorded 1,700 examples of recasts and found that:
– Half the errors were committed again shortly afterwards
– Less than a third of learners even remembered the correction (and if they did, it didn’t mean that they later produced the language correctly)
– Peers did not notice the correction of others
So, if repeating an incorrect utterance correctly is probably of quite dubious benefit, why would teachers ‘echo’, or repeat correct utterances?
The most common reason given is that it provides learners with another opportunity to be exposed to the language. This comes from the same roots as the notion of recasting, and assumes that learners learn a second language in the same way as children learn their first language. But, as we have seen, learners don’t tend to notice or respond to the teacher’s repetition, even when there’s something salient in it.
The second reason teachers give for echoing is that it helps other students to hear what the first student said, as students are often prone to mumbling. This may certainly be true, but does it encourage the students to speak up and make the effort to communicate with each other? Or, rather, does it give the impression that the only communication which counts has to go through the teacher?
Which brings me to my third point (which, to be fair has never been offered to me as a reason for using echo). Habitual teacher echo massively increases the amount of teacher talking time. Now, I’m not against teacher talking time, per se. Good quality input from teachers is a wonderful resource. However, automatically repeating every utterance like a parrot is not good quality input. It just takes up valuable space and time.
And furthermore, people do not actually communicate in this way in real life, so it gives the impression that the interaction is not real in anyway, that it’s simply a mechanical exercise.
So, in answer to my own question, I would say that teacher echo is very rarely helpful, and that, while it may be a deliberately contentious over-statement, it is quite controlling and greedy. There are also a lot of much better things you could be doing to provide high quality interventions (more on this in a future post).
If you do want to see how much echoing you actually do, it’s really worth recording yourself teaching. This is pretty easy to do unobtrusively with a mobile phone, and may surprise you. It’s also likely to improve the quality of your teaching, as raising awareness is the first step towards making conscious decisions about the kind of interactions you want your class.
If you are currently taking CELTA, can I suggest my e-book, The CELTA Teaching Compendium, available from Amazon and Smashwords, containing everything you need to know for CELTA teaching practice.
Filed under Speaking, Teaching methodology, Working with groups
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Dictionary definitions of monitoring include:
To check the quality or content of something.
To keep track of systematically with a view to collecting information.
To keep close watch over; supervise.
Classroom monitoring can, I think, involve all of these aspects, and doing it well is a key teaching skill. We’ve all seen (or probably been) teachers who either breathe down students’ necks, making them desperately uncomfortable, or who wander off and start doing admin tasks at the back of the room (though the latter might just be monitoring very subtly!)
Monitoring to check the activity
As students start a task, it’s very important to check they know what they’re doing and that they are able to do it. So, although you might want to back off in order to make them feel less self-conscious, you probably need to at least subtly look around and see if people are on-task. Listen in unobtrusively, perhaps while doing those admin tasks, and make sure they’re ok. If one pair or group is uncertain about what to do, go and help them. If more than one pair or group is uncertain, I’d advise against going round and helping them all. It’ll take too long, and waste precious time for those waiting to see you. This is how I failed my O level maths (that, and too much gossiping). Just stop the activity and set it up again. And this time, check your instructions.
This kind of monitoring is simply pragmatic, and about helping things to run smoothly. It’s most important at the beginning of a task, but you can also do this kind of monitoring while a task is in progress to see if a group have finished early, if they need more support or more challenge and so on. Especially if you’re teaching young learners, you can also assess if they are starting to tire of the activity, and if you need to swiftly bring it to a close before all hell breaks loose.
Monitoring to assess language and/or skills
The other main reason for monitoring is to assess the language the students are producing (or their skills). This is vital if you want to be able to use your skills to actually help students develop. If you aren’t listening or paying attention, how can you possibly have any idea what they can do, or what they still need help with? “If a tree falls in a forest and no one is around to hear it, does it make a sound?” Well, of course, students are still able to listen to each other, and to themselves, but I hope you get my point.
How?
Perhaps you’ve heard about the secret handshakes that Masons are supposed to use to recognise each other? There’s a secret way that trainers who were trained up at International House (IH) can do this too….they crouch. Well, maybe not all of us, but I’ve recognised a few fellow ex-IHers this way. The idea is that by getting down on the students’ level, you’re less obtrusive and threatening. I think there’s something in this, but if students aren’t used to it, it can be a bit discombobulating for them (I knew I’d get to use that word in a blog post one day!)
It also isn’t great if you’re wearing a shortish skirt.
Being unobtrusive is important, however. You could try sitting at a short distance and looking elsewhere while your ears work overtime. If you really want to freak them out, look at one pair while listening to another, and then comment on what the second pair said. In a smallish class, it can also work quite well to sit on a chair in the middle of the room and lean forward. It signals that you’re listening, but isn’t too (literally) in your face. If students are writing, you’ll need to get closer. Try walking behind as these means they don’t have to stop what they’re doing and turn their book round to show you. It also helps to learn to read at strange angles.
Try not to get too involved with a group as this means you can’t tell what’s going on elsewhere. This can easily turn into small group teaching, while the rest of the class feel ignored, get bored, start throwing paper aeroplanes…. This (small group teaching, not throwing paper aeroplanes) might be OK in some circumstances, though. For example, with a longer project-like activity, once you are SURE everyone knows what they’re doing and can work independently.
What should you be listening for?
Obviously this depends on what the students are doing. Here are some suggestions.
Speaking tasks
Are they using the language you’ve been working on in class? Bear in mind that if they aren’t, it might be because you (or the coursebook writer) hasn’t designed the task very well.
Is the language you plan to focus on already being used naturally? If not, that will provide a ‘gap’ for you to feed language into later- as in task-based learning.
Can you identify a gap, or language they need to do the task more effectively? If so, make a note, teach it at the feedback stage, and then let them do the task again.
Grammar or vocab exercises
Monitoring should tell you which students are finding it easiest, and which are struggling. How many are struggling? (Do you need to deal with this whole class or on an individual basis?)
It’s also a great opportunity to think about who you are going to nominate at the feedback stage. You don’t want to put people on the spot [unless they really deserve it ;)] by asking for answers they don’t know. It can also be a good idea to give a weaker student a boost by nominating them when you know, from monitoring, that they’ve got the answer right.
After monitoring
As well as carrying out feedback on a task, or conducting an ‘error correction slot’ (where you write mistakes you heard on the board, anonymised and ask students to try and correct them), you could write down examples you heard of language which was particularly successful or useful.
Alternatively, you could choose not to feedback at that point, but to note down what you’ve learnt about their needs and plan a future lesson around them.
If they haven’t used the target language they were ‘supposed to be’ practising, you could take some examples of what they did say (which was correct), give praise for it, and then try to elicit other ways of saying it which do use the target language.
Or you could ask students to feedback on other aspects of the task- such as how well they worked together- and give them your own feedback on what you noticed.
If, on the other hand, you’ve just been filling in the register while they did the task, you can’t do any of these things…
If you found this post useful, why not check out my e-book, The CELTA Teaching Compendium, a quick easy reference to all the teaching skills required for CELTA.
http://the-round.com/resource/the-celta-compendium/
Filed under Differentiation, Teaching methodology, Working with groups
In my previous post I gave a brief overview of what I think mindfulness is, and how it can be beneficial for teachers. As I think it can be beneficial for everyone, obviously, there are applications for students as well.
While I do believe that our remit as teachers can be wider than simply teaching language, I don’t think it is the teacher’s role to therapise the students, nor are most teachers in any way trained or prepared for this. That said, most teachers don’t have a problem with encouraging students to develop self-evaluation skills, and mindfulness can be seen as simply an extension of this.
Perhaps the central focus of mindfulness is the focus on the present moment. This doesn’t mean that you somehow aren’t allowed to think about what’s just happened or about to happen, but that you shouldn’t be so caught up in the past or future that you aren’t really ‘here’. So an activity where you describe a memory is absolutely fine; thinking about what you’re going to have for tea tonight while your partner talks to you about their memory, not so much.
Clearly, it is in the interests of learning for students to be fully present in the classroom, so how could this be facilitated?
Start the class right
In my last post, I mentioned the importance of starting the day right. The same principles can be applied to a class. It’s really important to start the class with everyone fully focused. Some ideas for facilitating this, from Mindful Teaching and Teaching Mindfulness
– For young learners, start with a song or jazz chant or clapping game.
– Take out something really interesting to look at and gradually pull in everyone’s attention
– Read something really interesting aloud
– Start with a riddle or puzzle
– If learners are engaged in discussing something as they come into class, start there.
[And there was another idea involving using a Tibetan bell….but I promised EBEFL that I wouldn’t mention anything like that ;)]
Awareness
In this excellent post, Kevin Stein writes about keeping a real time journal- a reflective tool where he jots down notes about what is actually happening in the class as it happens. This helps him to make decisions about what to do next- in essence it’s a tool for focusing on the present.
The same kind of activity can work very well for students, and is a good short activity for early finishers. Rather than drifting off, ask them to write a few sentences about what they notice happening in the classroom and/or about what they are feeling. This might give you an insight into the class or the student from a different angle- unless the student wants to keep what they have written private.
Or you could occasionally carry out more extended noticing tasks. For example, the dogme activity, the Sounds of Silence, from Teaching Unplugged, where the class simply listens in silence for one minute to whatever is happening around them (open the windows or door) and then discusses what they heard.
A classic mindfulness activity (originating, I think, with Jon Kabat-Zinn) is to eat a raisin, with complete attention. For example:
Pick up a raisin and hold it in the palm of your hand. Look at it. Examine it. Describe the raisin. What does it look like? What color is it? How would you describe the texture? Now, feel the raisin in the palm of your hand. What does it feel like against your skin? Pick it up with your other hand. What does it feel like in your fingers? Is it slimy? Rough? Smooth? Soft? Hard? Squeeze it softly. What do you feel? Smell the raisin. Describe how it smells. Put the raisin in your mouth, but do not eat it. What does it feel like on your tongue? What does the texture feel like now? How does it taste? How does the taste compare to the way it smelled? Move it around in your mouth and notice every aspect of the raisin. Bite the raisin and think about what you taste. Now how does the raisin feel in your mouth? Finish chewing and eat the raisin. How did it taste? Describe the experience of the raisin.
This can work really well in class-students listen, carry out the activity and then write about the experience. Of course, you could do it with any activity- not just eating a raisin!
Dialogic teaching
Any approach, such as Dogme, where the emphasis is on real-time communication between the people in the class, will naturally promote being in the present (even if you’re talking about past experiences). If students are fully involved and engaged, they are present.
In this way, most teachers will, of course, already be promoting mindfulness with their students, and will be in a mindful state themselves whenever they are completely engaged and ‘in the flow’.
However, even in this kind of dialogue, we are not always in the present. Tim Lott puts this very well in a recent Guardian article:
In our western relationship with time, in which we compulsively pick over the past in order to learn lessons from it, and then project into a hypothetical future in which those lessons can be applied, the present moment has been compressed to a tiny sliver on the clock face between a vast past and an infinite future. Zen, more than anything else, is about reclaiming and expanding the present moment.
We talk about ‘teachable moments’, and it is my experience that the more fully engaged people are, the more teachable moments appear. So, conversation with students can, I believe, be taken deeper, and made more memorable, by asking questions which bring students back to now.
This doesn’t mean that you are saying that what they believe isn’t true, by the way, just that you are getting them to think about it again, from a fresh viewpoint.
Emotional response
A central part of awareness is being aware of emotions and feelings. Fiona Mauchline recently wrote a wonderful blog post about getting in touch with emotions as a way of making language more memorable.
We learn language when it becomes ‘salient’ for us, and an emotional response is a big part of that. A lesson on what makes you happy, by @designer lessons, had a profound effect on a class I taught, both emotionally and in terms of the language they seemed to retain.
Similarly, you could have a lesson about what things make people feel angry (bearing in mind the questions under dialogic teaching above).
In mindfulness, however, there is an important distinction between being aware of emotions, and believing that the emotion IS you. Mindfulness works on recognising the emotion, accepting that you’re experiencing it (rather than suppressing it), but seeing it as a passing event, like feeling hot or cold. They’re just sensations in the moment, and will pass.
The element of surprise
You can’t learn if you’re not awake , said Kevn Stein in another blog post you should check out. He was talking about introducing elements of surprise or challenge to wake students up. Mindfulness, far from being a passive kind of drifting off, is all about being awake, really awake.
So, ultimately, anything which (gently) pulls students (and teacher) awake and in touch with what is actually happening right now, is mindfulness. With this in mind, I’d argue that it’s easy to see how mindfulness applies to the classroom, as much as any other part of life.
For Phil Longwell talking about mindfulness on the #ELTchat podcast see http://eltchatpodcast.podomatic.com/
If you’re interested in mindfulness, check out my new website, www.life-resourceful.com
Filed under Teaching methodology, Working with groups
What mindfulness is (and is not)
Mindfulness is a term that is becoming increasingly familiar to many people, but it is still not that clear to many, I think, what exactly it means. Mindfulness isn’t about drifting off into your inner world; it’s more about being fully conscious, really aware of what we’re doing and feeling, right now.
Most of us spend most of our time only dimly aware of what’s happening for us right now. We are usually too busy making future plans, worrying about stuff, remembering things and reacting to situations based on what we think we’ve learnt in the past. Our mind is crowded out with all sorts of stuff.
However, mindfulness isn’t about having an empty mind; it’s about being focused.
Why mindfulness for teachers?
For many people, myself included, one of the great attractions of teaching is that it can be so absorbing that I often find myself in a state of what Csikszentmihalyi calls ‘flow’. When we are totally present in the classroom (or anywhere else), time goes very quickly and we are really in a state of heightened awareness, feeling alert and alive. Communication flows easily between us and others and everyone seems to be really focused on the experience of learning. This is a very enjoyable form of mindfulness, and it can be encouraged by developing our own mindfulness practice outside the classroom.
Mindfulness , flow, feeling connected is not so much something that we have to acquire, as something which is always there, but that we tend to be very good at blocking out through anxiety, fear, anger, mind-chatter, judgements and so on.
The more we practice mindfulness, the easier it is to connect to that peaceful place when we’re under pressure, students are playing up, the lesson plan isn’t working and so on.
Mindfulness helps us to be able to respond to a difficult situation calmly, rather than a knee-jerk reaction of feeling angry with ourselves or the students, or feeling that we’re not good enough or whatever our particular ‘favourite’ reaction might be.
Rather than feeling exhausted and drained at the end of a class, we’ll feel energised and alive (and so will the students).
Techniques to develop mindfulness
A key personal discovery is how important it is to start the day right. That doesn’t mean you can’t get things back on track, but it seems to really help to start by getting into the right frame of mind. How you do this is a matter of individual choice, of course: meditation, a brisk walk taking full notice of nature around you or simply setting your intention for the day- reminding yourself to stay in touch with what’s actually happening, take proper breaks, eat well, or to be kinder to yourself etc.
Whenever you remember (and don’t beat yourself up for forgetting, because you will most of the time), check in with what’s actually happening, and how you are feeling. When those feelings are negative, don’t deny or suppress them- just notice them and accept them (rather than telling yourself you shouldn’t feel that way), and most of the time they’ll just fade away. When they don’t, you can put them to one side until later and then try a bit of pillow bashing, talking stuff through, writing it all down and so on. But remember that your thoughts aren’t necessarily true- they’re just thoughts. This may help you not to get too caught up in the drama of it all.
Every so often (decide when in advance), take a few minutes to just breathe and become aware. I like to go for a short walk outside.
There are several excellent books on developing mindfulness which I would recommend for developing your own practice:
Mindful teaching and teaching mindfulness – Deborah R. Schoeberlein
Mindfulness: a practical guide -Mark Williams and Danny Penman
Mindfulness for beginners: Jon Kabat-Zinn
Any of these books will guide you through exercises designed to help build your inner resilience, dissipate stress, help you to be in the ‘flow’, help you deal with difficult situations and students and generally greatly improve your quality of life.
In my next post, I’d like to look at how you can encourage mindfulness from your students- in ways that won’t feel too different from what you already do, but that may make a difference to the quality of learning.
Other blog posts on mindfulness related topics:
http://tpstefltravels.blogspot.co.uk/2012/10/mindfulness-elt-chat-summary.html
http://itdi.pro/blog/2012/05/14/working-with-difficult-students-chuck-sandy/
http://malingual.blogspot.co.uk/2012/10/a-note-on-mindfulness.html
If you’re interested in mindfulness, check out my new website, www.life-resourceful.com
Filed under Teaching methodology, Working with groups
Who are you?
This may seem an obvious question, but now try getting a pencil and writing down ten different responses to that question before you read on….
…If you look at your list, you might have listed your gender or ethnicity, and there may be some adjectives such as kind or artistic. You’re likely to see a set of roles that you play: teacher, manager, parent, son or daughter.
We all play different roles in different groups, and the classroom is no exception.
You are likely to take on different roles within your role of being a teacher: facilitator, critic, guide… But what about the roles your students take within the group?
Group theory (see, for example, Communicating in small groups: Beebe and Masterson) divides roles into three different types:
Task roles: roles that help a group carry out a task
Some examples
Initiator- contributor: proposes new or different ideas or approaches
Information seeker: asks for facts or clarification
Opinion seeker: Asks for values and opinions
Elaborator: provides examples
Orienter: attempts to summarise and keeps the group focused on the task
Maintenance roles: roles that help the group work smoothly together
Some examples
Encourager: Offers praise and acceptance
Harmoniser: mediates disagreements
Compromiser: attempts to resolve conflicts
Individual roles: these tend to be counter-productive to the group as a whole
Some examples
Aggressor: puts other people down
Blocker: negative, stubborn and difficult
Dominator: tries to take over the group
It is tempting to use these roles to start labelling your favourite (or least favourite students), but in fact, roles change all the time, and people can play many different roles. The point of exploring different roles is not to stereotype people or make them feel they should be carrying out a particular role, but to help the members of a group or class be aware of how they are all working together, and how that interaction could be improved.
Activities to raise awareness of group roles
The first two ideas are both ways for students to track interaction within a small group. This can be very useful for getting an overview of how the group is working.
At the end of the task, the observer should feedback to the group on what they observed, and the whole group can discuss the findings:
– What do you notice about the lines of communication?
– Were the lines of communication an effective way of carrying out the task? Why/why not?
– Was everyone happy with the way they participated?
– What things could the group change in the future?
This task is taken from Conversation: Nolasco and Arthur.
2 A similar, but perhaps more entertaining idea, comes from Classroom Dynamics: Jill Hadfield. Rather than having an observer, the group has a ball of wool or string. The person starting the speaking task holds the end, and then passes the ball to the next person to speak. This continues until the task has finished (I’d suggest quite a short task!). The pattern of interaction will be very clear at the end, demonstrated by the web of wool or string. Or possibly the students will actually start to change the pattern of interaction as they see that they are either taking over a bit too much, or not contributing very much.
After this kind of activity, you could go a step further and actually start to look at the different kind of roles students are taking. This needs to be done carefully though, to avoid singling people out for criticism.
Jill Hadfield suggests two activities which could both be handled sensitively:
1 Using a self-evaluation questionnaire. There is a photocopiable one in Classroom Dynamics, which includes questions such as:
– Did you contribute any ideas?
– Did you encourage anyone else to contribute any ideas?
– Is there any way you could help the discussion to go better….by making a suggestion etc.
She suggests carrying out a speaking task, then asking students to complete the questionnaire individually and privately, then carrying out a second speaking task and finally discussing if and how the second speaking task was an improvement on the first one. (From personal experience I can tell you that this process can be completely transformational.)
2 Observing group roles. In this activity, students carry out a speaking task and are observed. The observer ticks how many times various things (such as contributing an idea, interrupting, evaluating someone else’s idea, not talking in English) happen- but does not note down who did these things. The group then looks at the results and decides which things are happening too often, and which not often enough. There isn’t necessarily a value judgement to these things. Contributing ideas is something we want to see happen, but if that’s ALL that’s happening, the group will not be working very smoothly! They then choose three things they should do more often and three things they should do less often.
Incidentally, although the observer in these tasks is not taking part, this can be a useful role for certain students. Students who tend to be very dominant can benefit from having to sit back and listen, and students who struggle to get a word in can benefit from having a clear role and being asked to feedback on what they observed.
Filed under Differentiation, Speaking, Teaching methodology, Working with groups
Background to the question
This is a summary of the lively ELTChat on this subject, on 6th June 2012, moderated as well as ever by @Marisa_C and @ShaunWilden. See www.eltchat.com if you’re not familiar with this great institution!
I volunteered to write the summary, as I had proposed the question (so it was my fault!;) ). What sparked the question for me was an interesting post by @ukteachers on his blog http://www.ukteachersonline.co.uk/blog_files/lack_person_centred_ELT.html. An example quote:
“The fact that teachers work with groups is part of the problem. The individual needs of each person simply cannot be met in a classroom environment. So teachers have to pitch things at the lowest common denominator in the classroom who is the student who more or less understands what’s going on. A great deal of what happens in classrooms is an exercise in training yourself to put your own needs last and the needs of the group and its consensus first. You don’t understand something? Tough – the teacher doesn’t have time for that.”
The chat began by discussing 1-2-1 teaching in general.
Advantages of 1-2-1
Lessons can be tailor-made
@theteacherjames suggested that ‘An obvious benefit of 1-2-1 is that the lessons should be focused on exactly what the st needs to learn’ and, similarly, @Shaunwilden added the benefits of ‘personally selected material, run at sts pace, easier to monitor class.’ @Kevchanwow also pointed out that, ‘1 on 1 allows for all (2) participants to focus in on a clear set of goals.’
And @andivwhite made the point that ‘More than 1 student immediately means multilevel in terms of personality, interest, language, etc. ‘
Some students will prefer this way of learning
@hartle and @RichmondELT mentioned the need to meet individual learning styles as well as goals and @Elawassell said, ‘Learning with a group may be frustrating 4 some Ss. The ones that get things quickly or for those who are slow…’
Several participants (such as @TutorMe_Online) also mentioned that students would need to participate more in a 1-2-1 setting, which might be good for shyer or less confident students.
Benefits in terms of accelerated learning
@TheteacherJames, ‘The st gets a lot of time to speak & listen to a high level language user. More demanding in that respect.’ And @rliberni felt that ‘It is tiring but very rewarding as you can see the student develop & improve before your eyes.’ @Elawassel referred to a student who was very clear that they found 1-2-1 much more effective.
@TutorMe_Online: Think 1-2-1 has the edge in terms of productivity & how much improvement a single student can make in 1 lesson
Disadvantages of 1-2-1
Difficult for the teacher?
Not everyone agreed that 1-2-1 was any more difficult for the teacher, but this was certainly the majority opinion. For example, @Marisa_C talked about being ‘on’ all the time, and AlexandraKouk said she found preparing and teaching ‘intensive’. @JoHart mentioned the difficulty with a shy or uninterested learner. @rliberni added ‘it can be tiring, also need to address issues as they arise which means you have to be on your toes always!’
On the other hand @theteacherjames felt that with experience, it was not necessary to do a lot of preparation, and @shaunwilden felt that there were ‘ways of taking a back seat’.
Not always best for the learner?
@esolcourses suggested that 1-2-1 could be isolating for the student and @teflerinha added that it could also not be the best preparation for the outside world. @worldteacher added that ‘many students gain confidence from a group setting’.
@kevchanwow made an interesting point, that ‘the power of peer modeling can’t be overestimated. The closer the peer is socially, the greater the impact.’ @worldteacher also mentioned the benefits of a group: less pressure, peer teaching, moral support, sharing, etc and @RichmondELT said ‘In groups independent learning is encouraged, students can help each other rather than always depending on the teacher.’
@teflerinha mentioned the fact that if we learn by negotiating meaning, that having to do so with a variety of people, some of whom might struggle to understand more than a ‘helpful’ teacher, could only be a good thing. Similarly, e_clements suggested a problem with 1-2-1 was that there was only 1 teacher voice and that ‘In a group Ss can interact with other NN/lower level speakers – probably more realistic for what they’ll need to do in real life.’ And @kevchanwow said, ‘Groups allow exposure to wider array of truly learnable structures, not structures teachers think should be learned.’
That said, @theteacherjames said he encouraged learners to listen to different voices outside the class, and a couple of people said that 1-2-1 classes in their context involved different teachers on different days.
Points about teaching 1-2-1 in general
The conversation turned to how people actually teach 1-2-1. A lot of people pointed out the danger of 1-2-1 simply turning into a ‘chat’. This provoked a lot of discussion, as several people pointed out that a chat was a great basis for learning- provided that students were enabled to ‘notice’ language and learn and develop. For example, @theteacherjames said, ‘I always start conversation led, then introduce relevant activities based on the conversation. Chat is priceless!’ or @andivwhite,’If the chat is structured with feedback and error correction, it’s perfect.’ Dogme was mentioned at this stage, but not really picked up on. (Incidentally I think 1-2-1 is perfect for a dogme approach, even IS a dogme approach..certainly that’s what I was doing 20 years ago teaching 1-2-1)
@ukteachers pointed out that ‘If u approach 121 as if you’re in a classroom and barricade yourself behind materials then sure – it’s dull as dishwater.’
@esolcourses reminded us of the danger of the teacher dominating, which point was taken up by several others. For example, @kevchanwow, ‘In 1:1 it’s hard to remember that silence is often necessary for production and consolidation.’
@Ukteachers said’I think of 121 as a specialised form of pairwork rather than being a TEACHER vs STUDENT situation.’
Horses for courses
At this point the talk moved on to whether groups were better. Many of the points had already been made when talking about 1-2-1, and the general consensus was that they were different things (not better or worse).
Essentially, most people seemed to agree that 1-2-1 was best for learners with very specific needs, but that groups had advantages too. Many of these are outlined above, but added were:
@hartle in 121 you can’t use grp activities that allow students time to repeat and consolidate new language etc. @teflerinha seconded the importance of task repetition.
@RichmondELT In groups independent learning is encouraged, students can help each other rather than always depending on the teacher
@MrChrisJWilson: #eltchat a teacher only has a set number of experiences, stories, input. Having other students increase the knowledge/stories in the room. Also allowing development of group skills as well as knowledge of grammar vocab and lexis
@ukteachers asked the question as to what we, personally would prefer. Obviously the answer varied according to the individual. Some preferred the intensive nature of 1-2-1, others the group experience- bringing up the intriguing notion that this might, like learning styles, be something that teachers had preferences for- and were thus in danger of assuming that everyone felt the same way as themselves.
Cost
Next there was some discussion about cost, and whether students expected more ‘spoonfeeding’ for paying more (@MrChrisJWilson), or whether the extra benefit was worth the extra cost (@Michaelegriffin. The question was asked about usual rate in UK- and this seemed to be between £9 and £50 an hour.
Conclusion
@esolcourses brought up the fact that many classes she taught had a combination of 1-2-1 and group work (This is/was common in the ESOL context, but disappearing with funding cuts). Many people agreed that a combination of 1-2-1 and group would perhaps be the perfect scenario.
Perhaps the last word should go to @hartle ‘Lots of good points here about both contexts, but a good teacher should be able to manage both and the challenge is to adapt your skills.’
Filed under ELT Chat summaries, Teaching methodology
