Conclusions

I’ve come to the end of the TESOL Diploma course now and what a year it has been. I never thought I’d be spending the last two months of the course in lockdown because of a global pandemic, but it seems the 21st century keeps throwing curveballs at mankind!

When I began the course, I wrote about a ‘knowledge gap’ to bridge. It’s important to keep learning in any profession but particularly in teaching and I have learnt a lot over the past nine months. It’s particularly satisfying to rekindle my joy of learning for its own sake, as that is probably the greatest pleasure of education.

The module in Language Awareness with Simon Wilkinson helped to cement my linguistic knowledge and covered some areas that I knew very little about, especially analysis at clause and phrase level, as well as a better knowledge of phonetics.

The methodology module was probably my favourite module of this course. I particularly enjoyed Paul Slater’s classes and really enjoyed grappling with different perspectives on teaching and the discussions these prompted in class. Studying alongside a lot of very passionate teachers has been a highlight. Teachers such as Jack, Adam, Nico, Jo, Jane, Rossa and others have all inspired me in different ways.

It has been very useful in the module assessments to investigate more deeply the issues that Arabic learners have in ESL. These students make up the bulk of my classes at present and I have feel I have gained a broader and deeper knowledge of the challenges they face as a result of my research for the methodology and second language acquisition modules.

I said in my opening statement that I considered my strengths to be an ability to entertain and activate classes but I realise that is me on a good day, not every day. It was quite a chastening experience to video myself on a bad day when students had not done their homework and there were discipline issues in class. We can’t be balls of energy all the time but this uncomfortable truth prompted me to evaluate the effort I was putting in to activating classes, and I was pleased with the results in following classes.

I have grown in confidence as a specialist in writing and EAP through this year. I was particularly pleased with my second teaching observation in which I focused on teaching paragraphs and counter arguments. I felt in full flow in that class and in my element. However, it has also been positive to gain a better understanding of other areas of ESL. I feel I have a more solid knowledge of teaching vocabulary. I recall in particular the peer observation of a colleague at the college, which I considered a model lesson in teaching and developing vocabulary usage.

The materials module has been particularly interesting. As a writer and author I’ve always had an interest in writing materials and have developed some of my own over the years. This module and the lesson observations enabled me to take a far more critical view of both textbooks and when, how and why to supplement and modify them. I am particularly interested in materials that help to scaffold knowledge. I’m also mindful that I have used too many materials in one class on occasion. I recall an observation by my manager over a year ago when I gave students no less than six handouts! The observation of my colleague teaching vocabulary was particularly eye-opening because he used just one handout and built on it over the course of an hour. Doing more with less is a solid teaching principle in my view.

I want to continue to challenge myself to improve in areas I am less strong. I know I can teach higher levels well and I know I’m strong at writing, study skills and communication skills. I’m less experienced in recent years with intermediate levels and below and it’s been good to rediscover the value of all those nuts and bolts that I learnt in my CELTA many years ago: eliciting, drilling, checking for understanding and in particular, knowing when to correct. I am aware of my tendency to over-correct and also my tendency to overload students and move too fast. Being aware of your own shortcomings is important and a first step to working on them.

An issue for me on this course has been that I strongly dislike being observed. I have discovered though that I mind far less when I know the person well, and felt far less nervous for peer observations than assessed course observations. It’s unfortunate that I often don’t show the real me in lesson observations because I feel a need to stick to a lesson plan and not improvise. This improvisation is a strength of my teaching but I haven’t shown it much in observations. In a class immediately after an observation I did a lot of improvisation including a spontaneous introduction of teaching and drilling pronunciation pairs when a student had trouble distinguishing between ‘want’ and ‘won’t’. This kind of spontaneity would be less likely to happen in lesson observations. There’s little I can do about that, and it doesn’t necessarily need to be documented in an assessment for me to know what works and what doesn’t. I can reflect on that myself.

I acknowledged in my opening statement that taking on this course would be a big challenge alongside two jobs at university and being a single parent of two children. It has proved to be challenging but until the Covid 19 crisis, I felt I was balancing things quite well. My tutors gave me some flexibility and I kept my schedule clear enough to do the necessary work. The biggest challenge has come since lockdown happened and I found myself struggling with getting to grips with teaching online in the middle of a pandemic with my children at home and all the demands of home life. This definitely affected the quality of my final two teaching observations. It’s a little unfair to have to tackle mastery of online teaching from a standing start while being assessed, but we live in unprecedented times that nobody could have foreseen. I can be quite hard on myself with high expectations so I need to take a step back and appreciate that I’ve done well to do the course full-time in far from ideal circumstances.

Overall, considering the current situation, I am pleased with a merit in my lesson observations. Two out of four classes went very well and the other two were strong passes. I feel I could have aimed higher if lockdown had not happened with all the accompanying stress and upheaval. I probably would have submitted a fifth lesson, but it can’t be helped. 65% was my target grade for teaching practice and I was pleased to achieve this more than once.

One of the most eye-opening pieces of feedback I have received on the course was following my second lesson observation, which went well overall. My tutor Paul mentioned that I was working very hard, perhaps too hard, and I should get my students working harder.

That was a lightbulb moment for me. I have been university lecturing for a long time and I have a tendency to take over proceedings. Especially when I’m being observed I’m putting in a lot of effort in classes. This is all very well but am I sometimes working very hard and not demanding or allowing the students to work as hard as they can? After all, it’s the students who need to be working. I am teaching them but the main aim is to facilitate learning.

I realise that, being schooled in the communicative approach, I place a lot of emphasis at times on the class being interactive, busy and full of life, when there is a crucial place at university level for students getting their heads down and doing the work – planning speeches, studying long texts, researching and drafting essays. I also realise that a cornerstone of the communicative approach is to reduce Teacher Talking Time (TTT), so I need to keep an eye on that in particular.

Now I am teaching online, I’m particularly aware of how hard I’m working and my enjoyment levels  dropped initially. I’m starting to bounce back now I realise I need to get my students working harder, both for my own wellbeing, but especially because that is what they need to do. So the conclusion on this point is: less TTT from me, and more facilitating. This could be the most important of my transformative reflections.

I finish the course grateful to have learnt a lot but also keen to learn more. That’s the way it should be.

 

Teaching observation 4

For my fourth teaching observation, I decided not to use a textbook, partly as most of my previous observations had used textbooks, and partly because this gave me greater freedom to tailor the class to specific needs.

My current online class is a lower level than my previous classes. The three students have IELTS ranging 4-5 with an average of 4.5. UBIC accepts students lower than IELTS level 5 to spend 6-12 months boosting their English before doing a further 6 months of English for Academic Purposes either at Foundation or pre-Masters level.

I have recently taken on 5 hours per week teaching this group Speaking and Listening and a further 3 hours doing study skills. Other teachers have classes focusing on reading, writing and grammar. Two of the students Khosbayar (known as Hoso) and Omar are pre-Masters students in lockdown in the UK (in Brighton and London respectively). They are in their mid 20s. Zaid is joining class from his home in the UAE. He is 18. Hoso is going to study a masters in business, Omar will study a masters in tourism management and Zaid a bachelors in business management.

All students are around the same level, although Hoso’s speaking is a little weaker and writing a little stronger than the two Arabic students. They are a very nice, small group of students. Hoso and Omar are very career-minded and dedicated while Zaid has a more laidback attitude. He naturally has a slightly higher level of English than the others but his commitment and motivation are sometimes an issue. He often has a poor internet connection, logs on at least half an hour late and usually has to disconnect and reconnect several times during class. I had anticipated this.

The class I delivered was focused around speaking and listening on the theme of jobs. I originally planned to discuss their own previous jobs at the beginning of the class but we did this in a casual conversation in the previous class so we moved straight on to the activation, looking at images of different jobs and discussing what different people do (e.g. ‘a doctor helps people to feel better’). On reflection a quick conversation about their own jobs would still have helped to activate them into the topic.

I encountered the first technical glitch at this point because Omar could not see the shared resource very well. This is a slightly perplexing problem that he encounters from time to time and it usually resolves itself, as it did on this occasion. I managed to draw out some discussion from the students before moving onto the first worksheet.

I find I am still getting to grips with sharing different documents through Zoom and initially stumbled here by moving to the wrong task (the listening) before the worksheet – even though I had my plan in front of me! Even after teaching for years I still get flustered and stressed during teaching observations, even online.

The first worksheet which contained a discussion of different stages of a job application seemed to go quite well. I have started using the technique of writing directly onto worksheets or slides online rather than using the whiteboard because I find it is easier than jumping between windows.

When we moved onto the listening comprehension, I knew that the students would need two listens. They generally did quite well although Hoso often answered ‘false’ because she was looking for the same language rather than same meaning, so I clarified this. On reflection, it would be best to clarify at the beginning of the task.

There was quite a lot of vocabulary that was new to the students – ‘advert’, ‘paperwork’, ‘qualifications’, ‘qualities’, and I tried to elicit and explain meanings as much as possible, particularly when vocabulary was key to understanding the tasks. When we moved on to preparing for the job interview, it was clear that they needed quite a lot of vocabulary. I think I would supplement a future class with some more useful vocabulary, especially on personal qualities. We discussed this and I elicited and wrote some ideas but there could have been more vocabulary preparation.

We then moved onto doing the scrambled sentences exercise with useful expressions and questions for  a job interview. This was intended as further preparation by giving them some ideas of the types of phrases and questions used in a job interview, and this seemed to work well.

When moving onto the preparation for the interview, Zaid finally joined the class after sending some messages about his poor connection. In some ways, this was the most inconvenient time for him to join because he had missed all the preparation and was thrown straight into getting ready to do a job interview. I had planned to get the students to do more preparation and brainstorming of questions at this point, but we moved onto the interviews. I feel that they were a little less prepared than I would have liked.

After a slow start and some prompting from me, the students gradually grew in confidence asking and answering questions. It was good to see them producing questions spontaneously and I did some on-the-spot correction, which hopefully was not too intrusive. They all seemed to enjoy the activity – and of course it helps to be told you’ve got the job at the end of the interview!

After this task I moved on to introducing a letter of application for homework. The purpose of this was to consolidate some of the language they had learnt connected to job applications.

Overall, I was quite pleased with the class. The technical issues Omar and Zaid encountered are a frustration but unfortunately an innate part of teaching online and best laid plans still need to mitigate for these eventualities. Apart from the odd stumble, I felt I was using the technology better than previously. In all honesty though, I long to teach in person again. Online teaching is all we can do at present and I need to improve at it, but it is a big challenge. I realise that face-to-face contact brings so much joy to teaching that online classes cannot do, as is the case in other areas of life!

I am still struggling a little with the level of the class because I have spent the vast majority of my teaching career with upper-int to advanced levels. I used a lot of eliciting, correcting, explaining and drilling to help this along.

I am aware that I often demand a lot of my students and this class was demanding. I think they coped with it well with plenty of speaking and listening practice that would be consolidated by the written homework. However, I think I can still improve on scaffolding tasks for intermediate level and doing more language work and perhaps fewer tasks in the time frame.

My tutor mentioned that I could have got more out of the listening and I agree but I didn’t want the listening to dominate the lesson as it was mainly a prelude to the interview task. My tutor also mentioned that I could have spent more time exploring meaning and, in particular, on suprasegmental issues such as intonation when asking questions. I will reflect on that latter point because in my experience students need and enjoy short exercises on intonation. We had in fact done a little work on this in a previous class, but consolidation would have been a useful addition to this class.

Much as I think on occasion I could produce a distinction-level class, I feel this would be very difficult to achieve with this current class in the circumstances, teaching online and troubleshooting so many technical difficulties. Overall, considering the core aim was to improve their speaking and listening on the subject of jobs, overall I felt it was a largely successful class, and I was pleased to get 65%, which was my target grade.

Here is a link to the lesson plan, Powerpoint and worksheets:

https://1drv.ms/u/s!BCsjk8RnnzgChi5OyvuwTadba1cg?e=0xhdbS

Critical incident 6 – Teaching online from a standing start

In the past week, like schools and colleges all over the world, we suddenly suspended face-to-face classes and within a few days were asked to deliver classes online via Zoom.

This has been an enormously stressful time for everyone. With so much to cope with in our personal lives, it was quite overwhelming to have to get to grips with teaching ESL online with only a few days’ notice. It was my first time teaching online as well. Aside from a few Skype calls to students, I have never done it before.

For the first class I delivered online, I decided to dispense with the coursebook and previous lesson plans completely and make the theme of the class what was on everyone’s minds: the Corona virus crisis. I sketched out a plan to split the class of 1 hour 45 mins into three broad sections: speaking, reading and writing. I used a Powerpoint presentation (viewable here: EAP111-Tuesday24March) with only 3 slides to cover each of the three tasks.

We began with a discussion about Corona virus and its effects on education, social life and home life. I made my first use of breakout groups. There were some teething problems here because I was unaware initially that students could not access the general chat when they were in their breakout rooms so I sent the discussion questions to each breakout room individually. I also made a note in future to ensure that students take a screenshot of questions or to send the materials to them over email before deploying them into breakout rooms. The ensuing discussion was quite good though once this was sorted out.

I then sent students a link to a BBC News story (https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-52014472) and asked them to read and answer some questions about the new rules on what people can and can’t do and what is open and what is closed. I decided that these specific questions would work well when dealing with authentic news as a source. Students did quite well at this.

Finally, I gave students the remainder of the class (about 45 minutes) to write a 200-word reflective essay on the crisis, summarising what has happened and give their perspectives on how it has impacted their life. Motivation to do homework and written work can be an issue with this group, but 6 out of 11 students submitted the task. Over 50% was actually a better rate than setting homework tasks in real life! I think students respond better to writing when they are given class time to do it and it doesn’t run into time outside class. They also prefer to type written work rather than writing by hand, especially because they are all young Arabic learners.

Overall, I was pleased with my first online class. I learnt what works and what doesn’t. I had quickly concluded from looking at the technology that the usual way I teach – lots of quick paired work – discussing short tasks, comparing answers etc. – would not work as well because breakout groups take some time setting up. So I decided instead to have more whole class discussions and fewer but longer tasks – a breakout speaking activity, a reading and a writing. This seemed largely successful.

I was relieved in some ways that the technology was not too difficult – essentially Zoom is a webcam, document sharing interface and chatrooms all combined. The challenge is to get breakout groups working better and to do more complex and varied tasks to maximise the benefits of the technology.

My next class I documented in Observation 3. I used the book in this class and came up against some unexpected difficulties, which you can read about in my reflections on that session.

Teaching Observation 3

For my 3rd teaching observation, I had planned a class for March 19th but this was cancelled due to the Corona crisis. I had done all the planning so decided to adapt this class for online using Zoom.

Two days previously I delivered my first ever online class. We focused on the upheaval caused by Corona and discussed what has changed in terms of restrictions. They wrote a personal piece of writing about the crisis and their own perspectives.

In the observed Thursday class, the focus was on healthy living, vocabulary and reading, which are areas in which they need more practice. Motivation and concentration have been issues in this class, so I have been putting more effort into activating the class, which I have documented in some of my peer observations in the past month.

The section on vocabulary in context is in response to the students’ underdeveloped ability to make educated guesses. They too often pick up the cellphone to consult the dictionary. I packed quite a lot of discussion and vocabulary into the first hour before they spent a solid half an hour doing reading comprehension.

This was only my second day teaching online so there were teething problems. In particular organising breakout groups can be complicated. Some students were using Zoom on a cellphone which makes delivery harder so I asked them to use their laptops.

Overall, the class was partially successful. Within the context of being my third ever online course, it went quite well but in an overall context I would regard it as problematic. Overall, I am still getting to grips with the technology with a lot of troubleshooting, and a particular problem was students not having the book.

The opening discussion about long life was quite good and I decided for simplicity to write directly onto the Powerpoint instead of switching to a whiteboard. This worked okay. I decided initially not to mute all the class or use the hands up tool. This caused a bit of disorder and I learnt quickly to target questions to specific students to mitigate this. The quiz went quite well and achieved my objective of activating them.

Watching the recording back, I need to be more aware that if I move my head away from the computer and talk while looking at the book to the side, then I can become inaudible so that is something to work on.

I tried to deal with the issue of students not having the book by getting them to screenshot pages, which was successful for the vocabulary exercise because it was short. It was harder for such a long reading though. I’m not sure what the alternative is because we are not allowed to send them the PDFs due to copyright.

I then introduced the topic of guessing vocabulary from context. Initially this discussion went quite well but students struggled with the short exercise on immortal and immature from the short reading on the jellyfish. I am trying to improve my teaching of vocabulary (as documented in my last peer observation) with only partial success.

I then set them a vocab exercise. Feedback was okay, although I noticed many students found the exercise difficult. I have persisted with giving students this type of vocab exercise because they usually struggle but finding ways of improving their performance is difficult.

I usually use a lot more short discussions with partners in class to discuss ideas or to compare answers but I find it is not practical to split students into breakout groups for very short tasks. I need more guidance and experience on use of breakout groups.

I set up the groups to discuss some quotes that I had added about long life. This was only partially successful. One group discussed quite well while the other didn’t but this may be a question of their motivation rather than a deficiency of the task.

We discussed the quotes and reflections on life in detail and I felt this was partially successful. The aim of this was to prep them further for the reading but on reflection it would have been more logical to have got them practising the vocabulary they had acquired. Instead the vocabulary exercise was mainly to assist with the reading.

I then set them a reading comprehension from the book. I had to continue troubleshooting and allowing screenshots of the reading – problematic but it just about worked. For homework I set further vocab practice and questions about longevity from the book.

In conclusion, it was a problematic but partially successful class. Some good discussion, a good activation and some success at teaching vocabulary and giving reading practice. On the downside, I still feel I could improve my teaching of vocabulary and my use of the online platform, particularly in terms of managing discussions and breakout groups.

One final point, I have failed to persuade students to turn on their cameras for classes. We discussed it last time and they feel quite self conscious. It definitely affects dynamics that they can’t see each other and I can’t see them but I cannot keep pressing the point if they are reluctant.

Further reflections following my tutorial:

My tutor agreed that the session was partially successful. There were a number of issues that I have reflected further on:

Firstly, it’s important to consider the goal of activation activities. I have made it a goal, particularly with this class, to improve the activation at the beginning to try to improve their motivation. In this class the quiz I added in about life spans of different creatures seemed to ignite their interest and got the class off to an enthusiastic start. However, my tutor questioned whether it really contributed to the core aims of the class: improving vocabulary and reading skills. I think it’s a valid point and I reflected further on this. On one hand, I don’t think every single part of a class has to contribute to the main aims, but on the other hand, it’s important not to digress. The students acquired general knowledge in terms of content and that in itself can help their motivation. It is true that the activation didn’t contribute much in terms of language though, beyond the names some of the creatures mentioned (clam, dragonfly etc). I accept that in some ways the quiz was a little ‘off-piste’. Yes, it helped to get them interested, but without really building towards the lesson’s key aims. I think the ideal activation has to do both of these, so I will look to make activation both eye-catching and more relevant to the lesson’s core aims in future.

Secondly, I need to do some of the basics better with online teaching – taking the register by getting each student to answer their name would enable me to check which students can hear and talk. I am doing this as a matter of course now. Also, checking the online chat more frequently as some students were trying to communicate with me in that way and I didn’t notice at first. This has come with practice.

Thirdly, and this is the most complex issue, my tutor questioned whether the evidence shows that  guessing vocabulary from context is actually any more effective and efficient than using a dictionary in many cases. This is an interesting point and one I need to investigate further. By my own admission, I struggle with teaching vocabulary ‘techniques’ on a deeper level beyond eliciting, explaining and checking understanding. My instinct is to prepare university students better for their studies by trying to get them to make educated guesses more often than using the dictionary, but in many cases, a dictionary is probably needed. Sometimes, it doesn’t matter how skilled a tutor is at explaining or how skilled a student is at guessing, the easiest way to find the corresponding word in their own language.

I recall from our lectures on lexis last semester that about 5000 word families are needed for upper intermediate level but 9000 word families for fluent reading at near native speaker level. I suspect that for many of my students, they are well below this fluent level and despite my regular requests that they write down new words and learn them, experience shows me that only the best students tend to do so.

I also recall from our lectures that it takes an average of 7 times of repeated exposures to a new word for it to really be ‘learnt’. That is a frightening number to confront if I introduce half a dozen or a dozen new words in one lesson, but Rome wasn’t built in a day! I think my conclusion on teaching vocabulary is that I can teach a few key techniques to guess meaning from context but all in all, there’s no substitute for repeated exposure and students getting down to the arduous process outside class of learning and practising new words, a process they often avoid. If using a dictionary assists this process, then so be it.

For lesson plan and materials, click on the following link:

https://1drv.ms/u/s!Aisjk8RnnzgChh3ZLUTa0iP4w_jP?e=oCBze1

Peer observation #6: activation, pauses and improving vocabulary exercises

For my final peer observation, my line manager observed my EAP class. The class can still be difficult at times but the dynamic has changed a little due to a combination of factors: they had a break for two weeks to do Applied Learning weeks, which are practical group-based projects and quite fun. They are aware that the exams are coming up fast in early April, and also I feel I’ve done better at activating the class at the beginning to stimulate engagement.

The next topic in the book was the future of food, a topic I was confident they would find interesting. As I often do, I decided to supplement the book to bolster the activation of the class and get discussion going. However, this didn’t go entirely to plan as my opening question was to ask what they had for breakfast. It turns out not a single student out of 12 attendees had eaten anything before the 9am class! That threw me a bit and on reflection I probably should have simply switched to asking them what they had for dinner last night.

After a brief discussion about the importance of breakfast, I moved on to a visual aid I had found: a cartoon of a basket of food and drink from the supermarket. I elicited from them what was in the basket and then we moved on to the more complex topic of where the food came from – we discussed farms and factories briefly. One student mentioned that bananas are grown in her country (Oman), which was interesting. Answers were not very forthcoming though and I moved on at this point.

My manager felt that I could have paused a bit longer to draw answers out of them and to expand on the idea of food origin – perhaps a quiz on where different foods come from would have worked. It takes a confident teacher to dwell on silence and get students to speak – and perhaps I would have paused longer if I wasn’t being observed. I recall a podcast we listened to on the methodology module in which the researcher found that pausing longer to give students more time to answer was effective and that even a 10-second wait can be effective at drawing more responses. Something to keep in mind.

We then moved to the book. The chapter opening was a photo of a ‘drought-tolerant’ tomato. I elicited the meaning as most students didn’t understand ‘drought-tolerent’ initially and this led to the main focus of the chapter opening – seed banks in the Arctic. The book is generally good with chapter openings – there is always a double page spread with photography and a small amount of text to scan with 3 questions that combine comprehension and discussion. This worked quite effectively.

We next did a vocabulary exercise on food supply in preparation for a listening comprehension. The book has a lot of these vocabulary exercises and I find their effectiveness varies. In particular, I’m keen that students don’t simply look words up in the dictionary but try to guess from context. I told them this but it was clear that the weaker students struggled with it. The exercise contained quite complex words such as: ‘skeptics’, ‘offset’, ‘detrimental’, ‘advocate’, ‘cultivate’. My manager pointed out that it would have been better to go through a couple of examples of guessing the meaning for context to show how it can be done. I often forget to give examples – but the book also omits this, so it’s a case of me remembering to take one or two of the questions as examples. I will try to do this in future.

My manager suggested assisting students with vocab by building context around a word. His example was: Step 1: Famished [probably an adjective]. Step 2: Absolutely famished [ungradeable adjective]. Step 3: I haven’t had breakfast. I’m absolutely famished [very hungry]. This was a good suggestion. I need to work on my approach to vocabulary. It occurs to me that teaching students strategies for making educated guesses of words is vital, particularly for preparation for university study.

I gave the students a gap fill task for homework using the vocabulary from the exercise, but on reflection it would have been better to do this in class. I think that teaching vocabulary without putting it into practice is far less effective – what does it mean to know a word? Context and usage is vital, as much of my reading in methodology has indicated.

My line manager left at this point. The class developed with a listening comprehension about GM foods and discussion about the pros and cons of using such foods. These sections went well and led on to the next lesson where we had a brief debate and then they wrote an essay on GM foods.

Overall, my line manager thought it was quite an effective lesson but he felt that perhaps I was spending a bit too much time activating the class and not enough time preparing them for and making full use of the vocabulary section. I agree with this. I have been quite preoccupied with motivating my students because I felt they have needed a boost, but in the end the motivation must lead to more effective learning. How I introduce and use vocabulary sections is something I need to work on. Going back to my first peer observation, I saw an excellent lesson that built understanding and use of vocab, so I am going to use some of the strategies my colleague used, as well as those suggested by my manager, in future classes.

Chapter opening

Chapter opening: reading and discussion questions

Vocabulary exercises

Vocabulary exercises

 

Peer observation #5: using the phonetic script

For my third and final observation of a colleague I watched a highly experienced teacher. The class had only two students with IELTS level approximately 4.5. These students will receive 6 months of English language classes before beginning Foundation level EAP in September. The students were a teenager from Jordan and woman in her mid 20s from Mongolia, so quite a contrast. This class focused on grammar, vocabulary and pronunciation, while other tutors teach speaking and listening, and reading and writing.

The first area of interest for me was classroom management. The teacher decided to make full use of the classroom even though there were only two students by creating three areas of the room to reflect the content: a grammar area, vocab area and pron area. I thought this was a refreshing approach. The worry for such a small class is that variety can be difficult, so to move them around physically to different areas of the room seemed a good tactic, and the students responded well. It is an approach that I can reflect on. I will probably have a class with two students next term and I think moving them around could work effectively.

The first portion of the two-hour class focused on pronunciation. The teacher gave the students the pronunciation journey game (see bottom of the page) from Hancock (Cambridge Uni Press, 1995), focusing on four pairs – man/men, chop/shop, place/plays, and put/book. He then tested them by reading one of each pair and seeing if they got the destination correct. Students then charted a course themselves and read to the class. I’ve seen this activity before but have not used it, so may well try it out. It was interesting to mix in several different sounds into the same exercise rather than focusing on just one pairing.

The teacher then introduced the students to the phonetic script. One of them had never seen it before while the other had seen it in a dictionary. The teacher then briefly went through the script and gave them a copy before focusing again on specific pairings. He focused on u and u: (e.g. good and food) and got students to listen and repeat.

I have rarely used the phonetic script with students except to practice minimal pairs such as ship/sheep etc for I and i: sounds. I found it interesting that the teacher chose to introduce the script. At first I think the entire phonetic script can be rather overwhelming for students though, so I was curious to know how the teacher might build on introducing it in future classes. He reflected: “At the college I do very little with the phonemic alphabet, but it’s been a key part of my EFL teaching. So last year I was in a language school in July, and was using this chart when being inspected by British Council. The B2 level students connected with it well, and I felt it was especially useful for them to become familiar with and be able to identify the various sounds in English.

“For this class, given that they are motivated and I have five hours with them a week, it makes sense to integrate this. At this stage I have the time to do this and feel that the students will benefit from getting an overall grasp of all English sounds, as well as helping iron out their struggles with particular sounds.

“I agree that too much can be overwhelming, so my usual approach is to teach a few vowels, then in the next class review those and teach a few more, and so on so that they become very familiar with them. I then start to test them, e.g. give them words to write in phonemic script, or vice versa, and go on to consonants.”

I found these reflections very interesting and food for thought. As a musician, I love working with sounds and have always enjoyed teaching pronunciation. In my recent EAP classes I have focused far less on it because the students need more reading and writing to pass their exams. However, I think I should build in more pronunciation  because students need it and enjoy it. The enjoyment is particularly noticeable – sometimes it feels a little like elementary school when you’re drilling pron but that’s no bad thing – it helps create a sense of unity in the class and a much-needed sense of fun when students are focusing so much on grammar, vocab, reading and writing. It’s an action point for me to bring in some minimal pairs and games into my classes, even if it’s only 10 or 15 minutes, as it is helpful both to the students’ learning and the classroom dynamic.

Pronunciation Journey (Hancock, 1995)

Pronunciation Journey (Hancock, 1995)

Critical incident #5: Writer’s block – what do you do when a student refuses to write?

The EAP class that I’ve taught since late January has been quite hard work. The class is 100% Arab learners and most of them struggle with writing and reading far more than speaking and listening. Motivation in the class is variable and I have particularly noticed that most of them simply don’t do homework. Over the past couple of months I have set several essays as homework and only a minority of the class completed the essays. One method of rectifying this is to get them to write essays in class in controlled conditions, which is also better preparation by replicating the conditions of their writing exam.

One student in particular is very resistant to writing. He is a bit older than the rest of the class and one of the weakest students. I have had difficulties with him simply not doing writing tasks. On two previous occasions, he has declined to even attempt writing an essay in class. I began by gently explaining to him the importance of writing practice. Our conversations turned more challenging a few weeks ago when he continually refused to do writing tasks, arguing that he finds them difficult and after all he only need to “go up from 50% to 55%” to pass. This line of argument I found particularly irksome. I kept pressing the point that practice will equip him better to pass the exam.

Yesterday, the student again refused to write an essay. We had spent the first hour discussing the topic of GM foods, doing a listening comprehension and debating the pros and cons. Students then wrote an essay either agreeing or disagreeing with a ban on these foods. I asked for a simple 5 paragraph format essay of 300 words and set out the format. I noticed that the student in question had not even written gap fill answers for the listening comprehension – his reluctance to write extended to simple exercises too. He refused to do the essay and, after weeks of trying to accommodate him, I lost my temper slightly and told him: “Write the essay or leave.” He called my bluff and decided to leave. I told him I would be talking to my manager about his conduct and he said he would do the same. Not an ideal situation.

I discussed the incident in detail with several colleagues and my line manager. I learnt that the student has also resisted writing in other classes and the matter has been raised before. He is also taking learner support classes. A colleague told me that he suspects the student has a lot of anxiety and this has turned into a block when it comes to writing.

Having reflected on it, I’m honestly not sure what to conclude – it was regrettable that the student chose to leave the class and perhaps my ultimatum was poor judgement, particularly if the student is very anxious. But was it ill judged  and the wrong approach? I’m undecided but am inclined to say it was the wrong approach. On one hand, it was upsetting for both of us but on the other hand, perhaps he needed a jolt such as this to change his attitude.

It’s the first time in years I can remember a student leaving my class in this way. I didn’t send him out; I gave him a choice and he opted to leave. I hadn’t expected that but my ultimatum was delivered in the heat of the moment – decisions shouldn’t be taken in that way but I am human. In a high school setting, sending out a student for refusing to work would be quite commonplace but in the international college of a British university, it is not.

The student met my department head to discuss the situation and did not return to class for some weeks. I’d be happy for him to come back to my class, but I worry that nothing will change regarding his reluctance to write.

The incident has left a bad taste in my mouth and I think on reflection I would not say “Write the essay or leave” again to a student. I would instead talk to my line manager about arranging a meeting to discuss the student’s refusal to write, so that the impact of this can be discussed, leading hopefully to a change in attitude.

Update (May 2020): lockdown happened shortly after this incident and after missing a couple of weeks of classes, the student returned to do online classes. He engaged quite well in class but as usual did not submit any written tasks. He failed his writing exam in April through non-attendance and has another opportunity to pass it in June with the help of a learning support tutor. I’m not surprised he failed to attend and feel I tried my best to improve his writing. Hopefully, the fact that he only has one more chance to pass the exam in June will focus his mind.

 

Peer observation #4: activate, activate!

Following my peer observation and video peer review the previous week, I came to the conclusion that I was not getting the best out of my students and had fallen into a bit of a rut with problems of student motivation affecting the pace and dynamics of the class. I tried hard to improve the situation in this class where I was observed by my line manager. This fact may well have prompted me to put more time into planning the class than usual and I think it was more successful as a result.

My first decision was to move onto a new topic. The students had spent a lot of time on the subject of the environment over the past few months and I had detected some fatigue with the subject, having covered it in various guises in 3 different chapters of the book. Indeed, there was a certain amount of irony in the fact that the topic last week was actually ‘environmental fatigue’! So I decided to skip over some of the remainder of the chapter and move onto the next topic: World languages.

I was very interested in my colleague Jack’s research indicating that student engagement was better when using materials that were original or at least appeared original, even if they were adapted from the book. With this in mind, I decided to pull out some statistics from the book about the world’s top 10 languages. To make things more interactive I put the languages and the numbers of native speakers jumbled up on a handout and students had to work in small groups to try to guess the order of the top 10. The quiz element of this engaged them quite well and they were very surprised to learn that Mandarin was number 1 (no student guessed this correctly), English only number 3 and their first language Arabic as low as number 4.

After giving students the answers in the form of a graph (adapted from the book), I got them to discuss what surprised them. I also mentioned use of the passive as a call-back to our coverage of that grammar two weeks previously.

They were engaged in the discussion but I don’t think they fully engaged with the passive. The construction does not exist in Arabic and I have found that students often avoid it. I only mentioned it in passing but I think on reflection it would have been better to present passive examples and get them to practice the construction more explicitly. My line manager pointed out that students often respond better to targeted task with a language model on the board to reference. As I didn’t make the use of passive central to the task, they simply avoided it. That’s something to bear in mind.

We then turned to the opening pages of the book chapter. One of the strengths of the Pathways EAP book is its punchy chapter openings and this chapter contained a map of the world coloured according to language families – Indo-European, Afro-Asiatic etc. Students were clearly engaged with the map and accompanying questions, and this highlighted the importance of visual content. My line manager suggested that I could boost this by using the interactive materials which contain the visuals from the book on slides. I have not used this so far and I agree that it would be helpful.

The class then moved onto a vocabulary exercise, which involved matching highlighted words in a paragraph to their meanings (acquiring, native, competence etc.). This then led to a discussion about acquiring a new language. I tried to get them to discuss this but with limited success and I realised on reflection that second language acquisition as a topic for this type of class is quite complex. My line manager suggested that I could boost this type of discussion by feeding the students a few more ideas – for example: How do you think the following activities help second language acquisition? a) living with a local family b) watching videos c) reading fiction etc. Again, something to reflect on. I think this was an example where planning and further supplementation could have improved the success of the activity.

The students then tackled a long reading comprehension with several tasks, replicating the type of tasks they would get in the reading exam. My line manager had left by this point but there were more points of interest that we discussed. The reading tasks included detailed questions, vocabulary questions and questions about a graph. All of these were quite well answered. However, the first task was to match 7 sentences to the paragraph they summarised. With a few exceptions, students found this extremely difficult and most got answers wrong. We discussed this and I agreed with my line manager that reading 7 longish paragraphs and then trying to match summary sentences to them is quite a challenging task. My line manager discussed some IELTS guidance that he had previously used and I am going to look at this to see how I can better advise my students on this type of summary task.

Overall, I was pleased with this class. I feel I achieved my goal of making the class more interactive and dynamic. Engagement was higher as a result. There were quite a lot of areas I could improve and this was a particular benefit of being observed by my line manager, who is highly experienced and has many useful suggestions.

Match up exercise

Match up exercise (above)

Graph and discussion questions

Graph and discussion questions (above)

Peer observation #3: don’t abandon the ESL basics

I have done two peer observations already but this was the first time I was being observed rather than doing the observing. My colleague observed the same EAP class that I filmed during the previous session. In my blog post on that session I acknowledged that it is a difficult class with many students having motivation issues.

The session didn’t start very well because it transpired that the projector in my usual room had broken. Because I was planning to show a video, we had to move to another room. This new room did not have a very good set-up with rows of tables going quite far back, and the noise of building work outside. Students also filled up from the back of the class. I should have challenged that and got them to move forward.

The session began with a very powerful video by spoken word artist Prince Ea on the subject of environmental destruction (see below), which I played twice, once for overall understanding and then again for more specific listening. Students discussed their answers before moving on to some vocabulary exercises in preparation to write a argumentative essay on the topic of climate change in the second part of the double lesson.

Overall, the lesson went reasonably well but I felt it suffered from the room set up being worse than the usual room, which contains several circular tables and is far easier to manage as there is no ‘back’ of the class.

My colleague had some suggestions for this such as putting handouts on the front tables before class, but more simply I should have had the confidence to get students to move to the front as management is harder when they are at the back. That’s an action point for the future. My colleague also suggested more active monitoring, which is something I usually do more but it was harder with the students sat in rows. Again though I need to make the class set-up work better rather than making excuses.

My biggest cause for reflection was that I seem to have reduced the amount of checking of understanding and drilling with such a high level class, and I need to rectify this. They are high intermediate university level and in some ways I think I have felt a little self-conscious that the technique of drilling of pronunciation where students repeat the words as a whole class is more appropriate for high school and language schools. My colleague told me that from his experience our students enjoy this type of technique and it facilitates engagement.

Having prematurely left behind some of the classic ESL drilling techniques now I’m teaching university EAP classes, I need to re-evaluate this. It would certainly help me with one of my goals of making classes more interactive and especially dealing with motivation issues with students. When they are compelled to engage, they do engage!

Overall, I think the energy levels were a bit lacking in this class and my colleague reflected that he felt there was ‘untapped energy’ from me and the students. He was waiting for me to spring to life more, but there was a certain amount of feeling self-conscious that may have interfered. My goal for the next class is to harness this energy more effectively.

Peer reviews of class videos

I made a deliberate decision to video a standard class for this task rather than putting in extra effort to make it look as good as possible. The result was a bit disconcerting.

My EAP class is difficult in several ways. Firstly, they are all Arabic speakers so use of L1 is an issue. However, more of a problem is their motivation this term. All students took EAP exams in early January and this class comprises those who failed at least part of this exam. While many of their friends and classmates are now exempt from the class, they have to continue until the next exam sitting in April. Indeed, some students in my class only failed their exam because they did not return to the UK in time after New Year. All in all, this makes for a difficult atmosphere with students having quite low motivation, turning up late, taking bathroom breaks, talking in Arabic and not doing their homework.

The class didn’t start well when it transpired that only one student out of the 10 who attended had done the essay set for homework. I had planned to begin the class with some peer correction of their essays using codes I’d previously presented (‘v’ for verb error, ‘sp’ for spelling etc.). I anticipated that some students wouldn’t do their homework, and my plan for this was that they do the essay while the others are peer correcting, but 1 out of 10 was a particularly poor performance and meant I had to move on.

I moved on to an activation exercise to get them ready for the reading and listening in the book. The topic was protecting the environment, which we have covered to an extent in previous classes. I began a brainstorm of environmental problems. Contributions were quite good. They then moved on to the reading. After working individually I like to get students to discuss their answers in pairs and then feedback to the class. I find that they often resist pairwork as looking bad in front of a peer can be an issue and as Arabic learners they often resist writing answers down.

The class continued to be disrupted by students arriving late, then asking to go to the toilet and many students clearly not discussing or going off task. I found it rather painful watching the class in all honesty. I was clearly frustrated at several of the issues outlined above and there were several examples of me telling students off. It’s not the image I like to present as a teacher, but unfortunately it’s indicative of the atmosphere in some of the classes at the College, and something I have discussed with colleagues who are experiencing similar problems.

My diploma colleague Jack was quite shocked to discover the motivation issues in the college. However, it’s not something I want to accept and my most important reflection from watching the class is that I need to work harder at activities to engage the students, get them enjoying English and perhaps moving around the class more. I need to wake them from their apathy!

By contrast, watching Jack’s enthusiastic class was a reminder of how much fun ESL can be, especially when teaching motivated students in a multilingual setting. He had a colourful presentation and kept things moving along steadily. We discussed that he adapted book materials after reading research that shows students engage more positively with handouts than photocopies. I found this interesting and it’s certainly something I have experienced. It seems logical that original material (or at least material that appears original) will stimulate students more than using the same book week after week.

We also discussed Krashen’s input hypothesis and the i+1 idea that the teacher adds an extra piece of information to keep pushing students. In one example, Jack elicited the meaning of a word and then drilled the pronunciation as the +1 piece of information. It was impressive.

Jack also introduced note-taking skills to the students using abbreviations such as ‘intrstg’ for interesting. I found this a refreshing approach. We also discussed the difficulties of doing such a task with Arabic learners and I’m not sure it would be so successful in my current class, having already tried with limited success to get students to improve their note-taking.

Overall, it was inspiring to watch my colleague’s class, while somewhat chastening to watch my own and compare the two. Working with highly motivated students is in many ways much easier, but that doesn’t mean that having low motivation in a class is an excuse to become fatalistic. How to improve their motivation is something I need to grapple with over the next few months.