Vocabulary Learning With Reading Materials

In the course I teach in, learners are required to read a number of graded readers each term. There has been extensive research into vocabulary acquisition via reading. Whilst the proponents of acquisition via extensive reading (Krashen) and the proponents of intensive vocabulary learning might be at loggerheads, not many people can argue with the fact that motivated learners who take ownership of their learning will be in a better position to actually acquire new language.
It was with this in mind that I started to think about the processes my students go through in trying to acquire new language from graded readers.
The first step was to notice the new language. With this in mind I asked my learners to highlight or circle any words in the reader which they were unfamiliar with.



The learners recorded these words on a vocabulary bookmark (which they made and decorated themselves).



At the end of each week, as a class we went through our vocabulary bookmarks and identified a group of words (5-10) that we were not sure about. The learners recorded these words on vocabulary cards and over the weekend found out the Chinese translations of the words using their dictionaries.



While the learners were finding their vocabulary translations, I made up a set of cards that contained the target words, a Chinese translation, and an example sentence.



When the learners came back to school with their translations done, they had hopefully gained a better understanding of the words (through the act of defining). Each learner was assigned one of the above cards and asked to write two sentences of their own on the backs of their cards, using a cloze format.



Once this was done, the learners used their self-made cloze sentences to ‘test’ one another’s understanding of the vocabulary. This was done in a fun game-like way and the student with the highest score was awarded a prize at the end of the week.
The whole process took about two weeks yet only required a minimal amount of extra class time. The benefits for this format were that the learners essentially selected their own target vocabulary. In addition, they got repeated and time-spaced exposures to the target vocabulary over a period of time. Such repeated, spaced exposures make retention more likely.

The first time this was done, all students worked from the same graded reader. This had the benefit of learners focusing on the same contexts for vocabulary and thus aided the procedure familiarization process. Subsequently, learners were able to engage in the same process but with their own individual graded readers.
I can highly recommend any procedures that we, as teachers, use to involve our learners in the vocabulary learning process. Have you had any success?

Drama! Drama! Drama!

For 3 years now I’ve been teaching drama in an ELT program in Taiwan. Each year my grade 7 learners put on a drama show. Each homeroom class puts on a separate short play. During this time I’ve made a few observations in terms of how drama can aid English language learning as well as promoting learner confidence and learner autonomy.
Drama holds great power for helping learners improve their fluency, intonation and speech rhythm. In terms of fluency, they will practice saying many of the same things multiple times – the key here is getting them to say those things in a fluent and natural-sounding manner. This is where drama teachers can be extremely helpful in providing models of natural speech intonation and rhythm. However, this can only work if the text one is working with is well within the learner’s ability level. If there are too many unknown words then they will not be able to focus on producing fluent speech. Similarly, if the text consists of long chunks of text, low level learners will have great difficulty in saying their lines in a fluent fashion. To this end, teachers have a significant role to play in text selection. Most commercially available texts will be inappropriate (long chunks, unknown words) for English language learners. Therefore, teachers will either have to modify texts or write their own.
Putting on a play can require a lot of work. In-class role-plays are simply done, but if you’re planning to put on a show then there is a wide variety of jobs that must be completed. From choosing music, designing costumes, making props, choreographing dances, as well as positioning actors on stage, there is a wide variety of jobs which students can take responsibility for. By successfully completing such tasks, students can raise their self-confidence, build teamwork through working towards a common goal with others, and introduce their own ideas and creativity to the classroom. Such actions allow students to really take ownership of the task (putting on a play).
The fact that my learners perform many of these functions in English leads them to raised confidence and self-awareness of their English abilities. It also gives learners a reason for using English other than the normal classroom tasks.

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