Graded Readers – Guided Journal Writing

Well it has been a while… MA and new baby have been keeping me busy…

At the start of September I was faced with another semester of teaching a graded reader with my grade 9 class. It was going to be the same old process of highlighting vocabulary, discussing themes, and answering comprehension questions. The students traditionally had exam questions that focused on exploring the themes of the text.

However, I had become frustrated with the lack of thought put into these explorations on the part of the students. In addition, the students were relying on me to tell them what I wanted to write (a situation which I probably promoted). The students also felt the text examination process was a little bit boring.

What I really wanted was to take a somewhat boring activity (novel study) and turn it into a thought-provoking discussion of the text.

Of course, English learners would require more time to formulate their ideas and responses to the text.

At this point I cam across a very interesting article:

Effects of Guided Journal Writing on Students’ Story Understanding. Wong et al 2002. The Journal of Educational Research.
(A big thank you to John Macalister, Victoria University, New Zealand, for making this assigned reading in my MA program).

Instead of the traditional study method, students were provided with a reading journal. In the front of this reading journal we posted a set of guided response questions:

1. How do you feel?

2. What do you notice?

3. What do you question?

4. How do you relate to the story?

After reading each short story/chapter, students were asked to complete their journal by answering these questions along with any other observations or comments. To assist the students (as well as to promote buy-in to the task) I also kept my own journal which was available to the students.

Here is an example of a student’s response:



All in all, I have found the use of guided journals to be both a rewarding and educational experience for my students. If anyone would like further information on this or the paper, please contact me.

Links for Classes With Computers

National Geographic has some great pages for kids to do research:

Countries

Animals

Yahoo has a fun World Fact Book

British Council has a fun Make a Monster page - good for learning colors/body parts

The New 7 Wonders page is an interesting basis for a C.A.L.L. class

Students can do some reading online at Children's Storybooks Online

Check out my C.A.L.L. class website for a few other ideas...

Classroom Interaction

Been a while since I've posted but my MA has taken over things for a little while. I've been a lot on Interaction Hypothesis (Long, 1996) which has given be cause to really start to think about 'how' my learners interact and communicate in my classrooms.

Some of the major features of the Interaction Hypothesis are:
Negotiation of Meaning
Negative Feedback
Pushed output
Modified output

Basically, these features point towards our learners pushing themselves to provide the next level of output, whilst using feedback (from either other learners or the teacher) to modify that output, and in turn notice gaps in their existing knowledge. Such noticing will enable them to revise their existing hypotheses regarding language use.

A good overview of this, and how it applies to your classes, can be found here:
The Interaction Hypothesis: What it is and How it Naturally Occurs in the ESL Classroom

To work towards providing such an environment I decided to employ some of the "Spot the Difference" style tasks that I'd been reading about in the literature.

If you're not familiar, these work as follows:
1) Learners pair up
2) Each learner gets one picture from the "spot the difference" pair of pictures
3) Learners then have to use oral language to find the differences (WITHOUT SEEING EACH OTHERS' PICTURES!!!!)

I was very surprised at the amount of language this generated. I had otherwise quiet learners engaging in 20 minutes of solid English speaking. Not only that, it required them to engage in deeper-processing of what their partner was saying, as well as seeking clarification from them.

So, where can you find some of these?
A good source is Penny Ur's book Discussions that Work (1989). It's part of the excellent Cambridge Handbooks For Language Teachers series.

Or, you can simply Google "Spot the Difference" and use pictures that come up.

Would love to hear from some other teachers as to how they generate high-quality interaction amongst their learners or from anyone who has tried similar tasks.

Thanks

NEWS NEWS NEWS!!!

Here are a few news activities for adult classes (high intermediate to advanced).

News Ranking Questionnaire
Discuss and rank news items
Focus - Practice expressing opinions / negotiate of choices

Functions of News
A discussion worksheet - why do we watch the news? Entertainment or information?
Focus - Expressing values - reported speech

Task-Based Language Teaching (TBLT)

Task-Based Language Teaching (TBLT)

Having been doing a bit of TBLT in my classes of late and have been really enjoying it – as have (some of) the students.

Specifically, we’ve been doing some of the ‘spot the difference’ exercises from Penny Ur’s “Discussions that Work” as well as some of the tasks from the “Pair Work” series published by Penguin.

Discussions that Work

Pair Work

In terms of TBLT I have 2 questions….

1) How do we motivate the unmotivated?

With every task I’ve done, I’ve had a group of learners who simply don’t do it? 80% of the class is engaged, yet there’s a few who are just not into it…

Now, this could be an issue with task design or it could be the learners are not interested in the topic… But I’ve found that every time I do tasks with teens, this is an issue.

Have you done tasks in class, and if so, have you encountered such a problem? If so, how do you overcome it?

2) How much TBLT is too much TBLT?

I would honestly love to teach in a 100% TBLT curriculum. However, in a secondary school in Taiwan, this is never going to happen.

Firstly, it doesn’t really gel with the image of classroom learning (i.e. not sitting quietly and listening to teacher). Secondly, some learners (perhaps those with low self-esteem) seem to sometimes struggle with tasks that require a large amount of oral production.

Therefore, how much TBLT do you do?

Here are a few good links:

http://www.onestopenglish.com/section.asp?docid=154596

http://www.tblt.net/

http://www.onestopenglish.com/section.asp?docid=144974

http://www.teachingenglish.org.uk/think/articles/a-task-based-approach

Nativeness Vs. Intelligibility

Have been reading a bit of Jennifer Jenkins work on "English as Lingua Franca" (ELF) of late. Basically, this focuses on English as an International Language (EIL) - communication between a nonnative speaker (NNS) and another NNS. For this kind of communication the focus needs to be on intelligibility - these speakers don't need to have nativeness as a goal...

In an ESL context, however, it is easy to see how nativeness would be a goal for an English language learner (ELL)... most of their communication will be with native speakers (NS).

Which leads me to my teaching situation... here in Taiwan...

I did a quick class survey with my junior high learners regarding their pronunciation. Nearly all of them said they wanted to sound like NS (except for some of the boys who simply didn't care). Now, living in Taiwan, they are never going to achieve that NS standard as their own pronunciation is going to continuously be influenced by the Chinese-influenced pronunciation they hear around them on a daily basis and in the English classroom. Promoting NS-like pronunciation could in fact lead to disillusionment amongst the learners.

Therefore, what are your ideas on pronunciation?

How do you approach it with your groups of learners?

I'd like to hear from you...

Cheers

Natural Speech - Working on Suprasegmental Features

Well, I finally got around to doing this lesson with my grade 8 advanced class (been very busy with school drama performances).

Just to summarize, the objective for this class was to get the learners to focus on:

• linking
• word stress
• rhythm
• intonation

I decided to use the Annoying Orange series of videos to highlight such aspects of the language. See the video below. I also extend my sincerest thanks to Gagfilms and daneboe.



In preparation for watching the video, as a class we discussed the focal points of the lesson and I got the learners to tell me why they thought such features were important. They commented:

• "My English doesn't sound natural... If I link words I can sound better."
• "Can help me sound more like foreigner"
• "Can help other people understand me better"

I'd like to note here that it was NOT a goal of this lesson to get the learners to sound more native-like (although a few learners do have that goal) - only to get the learners to focus on certain language features that can help them become more intelligible. In addition, furthering their knowledge of such features will better enable them to access authentic content.

The next step in the lesson was to watch the actual video for the first time. After watching I asked them some general comprehension questions to ensure they understood the content.

Next I provided groups with the the dialogue from the video. This dialogue had been cut up into chunks. Learners were put into groups of 3.

Order the Dialogue

We then listened for a 2nd time and the students were required to put the conversation into the correct order as well as complete some simple cloze based on contractions. Most groups managed this quite easily. Having them focus on contractions with the cloze was a useful way of highlighting how linking works in speech.

Next, I had the learners select 5 sentences or sections of speech that they believed they would have difficulty saying. I had them think about how such utterances would be naturally pronounced.

We then listened for a third time and learners checked the pronunciation and focul features of the highlighted text. They also made an attempt at writing how the speech sounded (e.g. How'v ya ben? = How have you been?)

Finally, in their groups, 2 learners assumed a role and performed the conversation to the best of their ability. It was the 3rd learner's job to act as a checker of the highlighted features.

To sum up, I had the learners complete a simple feedback sheet on the task.

Feedback Sheet

A vast majority of learners stated they enjoyed the activity, despite the fact that many learners indicated that listening for such features was difficult for them. Nearly all learners indicated that it was important for them to improve their pronunciation.

Some comments on the activity included:

• "It was fun! I love it!"
• "It is fun, but really hard for me."
• "When I'm hearing the real talking from foreigners, it wasn't easy for me. They sometimes talk really fast."
• "This activity not only improves my English but makes me happy."

To finish, I think this activity successfully combined two important factors for successful language learning - Interest and Motivation.

The idea of using Annoying Orange came directly from the students - I'd heard them talking a lot about it recently.

In addition, I was aware that several of them had pronunciation improvement as a major goal.

Youtube is a great resource for finding interesting subject 'authentic' subject matter and if used judiciously can really provide a fun and meaningful activity. In addition, it is imperative that we, as language teachers, are aware of our learners' inherent motivations for language learning so we are able to meet their needs.

Cheers!

Pronunciation Teaching

Have been thinking a lot about pronunciation teaching of late (probably due to the fact that I'm currently studying it as part of my Master's course).

In my experience, most of the pronunciation teaching I've done has been fairly incidental - i.e. coping with issues as they arise. And while I believe this is fine for dealing with most of the segmental issues that arise in student speech (e.g. /I/ - /i:/ confusion), it has never successfully dealt with those suprasegmental issues such as tone, stress, rhythm, intonation...

As such, I've decided to embark on some active teaching of these language features and see if active instruction can have much of an effect. I doubt I'll see much improvement in the near future, but judging the students' attitudes to the teaching could be an effective indicator.

Curt Reese's presentation from the Boston 2010 TESOL convention gave some good ideas to start with and I appreciate him posting his presentation slides on the website (see links). As such, I've decided to use the "Annoying Orange" (see youtube) as a source of material. I'll let everyone know how it goes and will post materials l8er.

Recent Conventions

There is a wealth of information out there on the web...

Just recently, both TESOL 2010 and IATEFL 2010 took place and there is some stellar stuff posted on their respective sites (see my links).

Welcome!

Have just set up this blog...

More to come soon :)