A stepping stone towards worksheet design…
Before approaching this session I thought of myself as someone who often comes up with own worksheets. To both my amazement and disappointment, none of those I could find on various USB sticks I carry aroun fulfilled task criteria. I came to a sad realisation that though I often adapt my lessons and ‘lift them off the page’ onto a Powerpoint or link them to a YouTube clip to engage my learners and give them a sort of a break from the book, this is hardly innovative or even something I could refer to as ‘mine’. Below a couple of examples of PowerPoints which I use alongside a coursebook or another published material.
Boyle – Deduction & Pre Reading
To look at materials I produce with a more critical eye as well as learn how to be better at designing them I started my reading with McGrath (2002: 92) who kindly reminded me of the functions those materials hope to fulfill:
To raise awareness of how the language works through an activity of some kind and/or provide additional practice
I have to say that for me this is rarely the case. As a non-native speaker I tend to do my absolute best to avoid writing controlled practice exercises from scratch. I would much rather find something else from another published material as if doubting I wouldn’t be able to come up with anything of value myself. This is not to say I don’t see myself as an effective teacher but rather one that needs to put in a little bit extra work to feel prepared for a lesson. I suppose this is why Videotelling in the previous week has really made such a lasting impression on me. My weakness as a teacher lies in coming up with questions on the spot. Jamie Keddie, or in my opinion any other experienced native teacher, could simple pull those from nowhere with ease. McGrath also raised an interesting point about worksheets having either an inductive or deductive approach. Having initially learnt English deductively at school I feel really strongly about the value of such practice. In my opinion, inductive approach can only work in full immersion in the target language as well as some background knowledge of grammar which would aid noticing and reformulating rules. McGrath also highlighted the importance of evaluating materials. This is something I also find extremely important and try to implement into my practice as seen below on one of my PowerPoint lessons:
Mishan & Timmins (2015) have presented an interesting comparison of design processes. For my current teaching context and design need I could most identify with a model by St Louis et al. ( in Mishan et al. 2015:172). Though I have never designed anything as comprehensively I am in full admiration and appreciation of its usefulness. St Louis process entails:
- Reflect on our beliefs
I find this is what really drives me as a teacher when planning and delivering a lesson. My beliefsare vastly influenced by my own language learning experience. Whatever material I use, adapt or produce has to resonate with my principles in order to make my teaching engaging.
2. Carry out needs analysis
My context being mostly one or two week monolingual groups I find listening to students key in establishing good rapport and essential to maintaining their motivation. As J. Renshaw mentioned in his tutorial, showing students you have put time and effort into preparing material will make them respect you more. To me, needs analysis is also what students may not necessarily tell us but what we know about their background. The group of students I had in mind are UAE learners preparing for an IELTS exam. Their main issues appear to be the same as years go by: reading and writing.
3. Formulate achievable objectives
I think this is something I should really work on. Coursebook evaluation seminar made me more aware of what constitutes effective material. Whether it is inductive or deductive it should give a learner a sense of achievement at the end. By using a text my learners want to understand and designing comprehension tasks around easy to find figures and names will not only encourage them to scan the text for specific information but prepare them for task types they are likely to get in their exam.
4. Find input material
This is where my insecure non-native self kicks in and doubts every choice possible. Following language awareness module I am most definitely more confident looking at discourse but still struggle to adapt text to lower levels yet still keeping text’s authenticity and key message. For this worksheet I simply trimmed a lengthy article which simply consists of several S+V+O sentences. I changed few words I felt were too complex for this activity and kept the new vocabulary all linked to the topic of cars.
5. Analyse the text
Just as videos have layers, so have texts. Input could be analysed as grammar, lexis, register and so many others. Lesson objective may explore one of the avenues but evaluation could shed some light onto possible extension ideas. With this worksheet I am first looking at vocabulary used in the text before moving onto grammatical and discourse analysis. The very text will then act as a template for forming new sentences
6. Create the activites
This is of course easier said than done but with our learners and a clear objective in mind this should not be as daunting as it seems. Yet again I found evaluating coursebook a very useful practice in seeing how inputs can be exploited.
So following the reading on principles and design processes followed when creating worksheets as well as most useful tutorial by J. Renshaw I decided to have a go. Here’s my (provisionally) finished product. Still to be tested. I tried to follow Masterclass’ tips on editing and wanted my imaginary learners to gain an awareness of language used in articles. The group of learners I had in mind were my old students from UAE. We often have small groups of young boys of Arabic background studying towards their IELTS exam. I found this topic would be of interest to them as well as focus on grammatical structures accompanying new vocabulary would prompt noticing. I would welcome any comments on both the visual and content side of this worksheet and hope to post feedback from a lesson on here soon.
As a lead-in I chose a speaking group or pairwork activity allowing learners to talk about most popular (I checked last year’s statistics) cars in both UAE & UK. In my experience of being shown proud pictures and videos of my former students’ shiny toys I am confident this would get them talking.
From that stage we would move onto the classic Pre-Teaching Vocabulary part. I would allow students to use their dictionaries and write it in L1 in the left hand column. This may seem controversial but I find it reassures students a great deal. After the first exercise I would also do a quick revision of the new word, checking pronunciation and concept checking. The second exercise could be completed and then reviewed in pairs. This may seem rather text heavy but is, in my experience, a realistic expectation with such learners. In the past I found they rarely take notes and hide with their mobile dictionaries. Acknowledging this could help the rapport but also be a perfect opportunity to discuss their learning strategies.
The reading section would first focus on 2 gist questions and also include a vocabulary box to encourage note taking.
Further 5 detailed comprehension questions would then follow. Students would then be encouraged revisit the article as well as the vocabulary page in search for answers.
The final stage would include a speaking activity based around news photographs. Before this task is set students look at the article and notice S + V (+ O ) patterns of sentences. Each photo is then described in 2 -3 article style sentences.
For full size version see: Boy Racers
References
McGrath, I. (2002) Materials Evaluation and Design for Language Teaching. Edinburgh University Press. Chapter 5 Supplementation: designing worksheets
Mishan, F. & Timmis, I. (2015) Materials Development for TESOL. Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press. Chapter 9: Materials design: from process to product pp.163-178.)
Renshaw, J. Teaching Materials Design Masterclass via Student Central’s Study Materials section
Re:worksheet. Nice clear design and layout. Some parts of it I’m not sure what would be done with it but that’s the problem with this kind of exercise I think. If you make it completely explicit on the worksheet about what to do with it, as I did with mine, the worksheet starts to look very crowded and suspiciously like a coursebook and made me realise why they partly look the way they do, giving too much information and not letting the teacher deal with instruction giving.
Thanks Dan. I left some sections blankish on purpose, like you say not to overload it. I find coursebooks too busy and simply too distracting at times. Tried to aim for the 25% of content per worksheet as per Renshaw’s tutorial. Thanks for your comment. What’s your blog?
Don’t remember that but 25% sounds right. My blog here…http://blogs.brighton.ac.uk/te714danskinner/ comments appreciated.
Hello Aleks,
I really like your topic for the worksheet and I think the learners you have in mind for this would find it interesting (what is it with boys and cars – just came across a group of Brighton boys the other day who nearly dropped dead with envy at the sight of a super car on London Road :-)). I like the visuals you use (not sure if I’d have an opinion of the first lot of cars but the boys might – the second lot of images at the end would definitely get their hearts racing!). I’m not 100% sure re the matching vocab and definitions task: I have often done this but am going off this type of activity – there is a lot of text for them to work through (probably depends very much on the level). I like your choice of text as well – reminds me of a time when I went to London with my kids last year: instead of going to the zoo or something we went to all the fancy car garages in Knightsbridge and loads of super cars were out and about. If you could make this digital a video might be even more effective (e.g. this one? https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iu-X1noKvJg) – or have you already done this (sorry, didn’t check). I think the images at the end of your worksheet would definitely inspire your learners to come up with something. Quite a challenge to write an article though (but you know your learners better). By the way, just have to comment on your feelings of inferiority as a non-native speaker. I’m obviusly in the same boat as you and have often experienced the same. More recently I have come to realise that a lot of it is in my head. Just because you grow up with a language you don’t necessarily know it better than someone who learnt it later in life. In both cases you just know the language differently. In many ways I think I am more language aware than a native speaker (I killed the grammar module on my certificate course! Not sure I’m still that good – interacting mainly with native speakers for 20 years now has made me lazy :-)). In German I am not that aware of language learner issues – learner problems in your mother tongue you watch other people have, learner problems in a language you have learnt yourself you have most likely experienced yourself, i.e. you might be able to offer more intuitive and relevant advice than a native speaker. I think homestay teaching really taught me the lesson of valuing my own strengths and not getting too hung up on my weaknesses. In homestay teaching ‘rapport’ (I’m not the biggest fan of the word) is sooo much more important than any language knowledge you might be able to pass on. I know that’s different in ‘proper’ classroom teaching but I still think it counts for a lot. I think you should reflect a bit on all the amazing things you have to offer as a non-native speaker teacher (e.g. as a highly-funtioning bilingual you might be your students’ ideal role model) and build on them. It’s positive reinforcement: if you tell yourself often enough you will start believing it 😉
Hi Alex,
Thanks for you feedback on my worksheet and post. As for the worksheet I was planning on adding a video instead of the pictures. The ‘article’ writing activity would have only been 5 sentences long and based on sample text so not too much writing. I chose the car pictures based on most popular cars in UAE and UK, so, hopefully, they would recognise the models often purchased in their country and potentially be quite negative about the others – all to get them talking. I agree with there being a lot of text in the vocab section but not sure how to go round it. Arabic students, in my experience, lack study skills and are reluctant to write and take notes. The idea of giving them definitions was to stop translation and sentences after to hopefully reinforce the meaning in context. I believe that the more exposure students get to new language the better chance of them remembering it. I would have probably done hot seat style revision game at the end of the week and keep the words on the board for the week.
I do agree being a non-native teacher has its advantages as it gives me a better understanding of what learners are going through. I also agree with importance of good rapport which is key in my context as I often only have a class for a week, so best to get on from the word go. Unfortunately, in my experience, I found that mentioning my nationality is not always a nice surprise to learner. I have had times where they found it motivating and saw that this learning experience can actually get them somewhere and it felt great to in a way liberate them from their insecurities of never being quite good enough. Then on the other hand I had students, muttering under their breath ( naively in their L1 I too understood) ‘ Thought we came here to learn English’, ‘She’s not even English so why are we in England for this’ and the worst one by a mile was ‘A Pole – hide your wallets’. I will have to agree it’s a matter of confidence and how comfortable I feel being an NNT. Having had bad experiences after mentioning it to students in the past I now do my absolute best not to get on that subject in most contexts. I have to say the ‘problem’ only ever occurred in monolingual classes and my international students are the ones who see it as an advantage so I have continued to make this distinction and it has worked. In terms of writing material this is something I would have to work towards in the next few years before feeling mildly comfortable. Writing and editing being definitely my weakness I better polish (no pun intended) those before venturing into the world of creating own content.
Thank you so much for your comment. Definitely something to dwell as this course is coming to an end.
Hi Aleksandra. That was s very in-depth reply and it showed how well you tailored the activities to your students. As an outsider it’s always easy to draw the wrong conclusions.
Thanks especially for responding to my thoughts on being a non-native teacher in the UK. It made me quite sad to hear about your bad experiences. What awful things some people come out with! You’re right, with that at the back of your mind it’s much harder to stay confident. It made me realise how lucky I am that I can tell students in advance so it’s up to them. I know that will probably not make you feel better necessarily but your students’ comments are essentially more about their perceptions of what ‘ideal’ native speakers are like. In ‘Teaching English as an International Language’ we talked/read about how that ideal does not really exist and how the dichotomy native/non-native does not do reality justice. I seem to remember that Aneta Pavlenko has some really interesting things to say regarding that (if you ever have time for extra reading look her up in the library). I think your experiences should go on Krisztian’s blog if you were happy to share them.
Thank you again for your comment. I do appreciate any feedback as it makes me revisit my worksheet and remind myself of rationale behind it. Am in the process of changing the last activity by using a video. So far found it tricky to find one without swear words in 🙂
Apologies for my bluntness re NNT, already shared some of my opinions with Krisztian. I think my teaching context is a tricky one as a native teacher is an unspoken expectation. I luckily managed to turn around all of the scenarios mentioned above and sort of proved my students wrong, so it’s not all bad and sad. I guess it’s just being put in a position where you end up doubting yourself as a teacher.
You have few more years of experience of both living here and teaching which is only inspiring to me as hopefully my confidence will slowly get to where it should be in time.
Once again thank you so much for your comments 🙂