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.
