This seminar took us back to a question from the very beginning of this module: what constitutes materials? We discussed tangible materials versus the intangible, such as physical worksheets, course books et cetera compared with memory games, discourse, peer checking, ad hoc conversations and so on and returned to Tomlinson and Masuhara’s definition that “anything that can be used by learners to facilitate their learning of the language” (2018, p. 2).

There will be two aspects to this post, the task we were set, and this module, which was delivered completely online. I think that would be an interesting discussion to compare our beliefs, the literature, and our lived experiences. The pre-seminar task we were set was to create online materials that was based on the teacher-created materials from week 7 and the students that had presented online materials for that week were given the choice to present those in more detail focusing on the online nature rather than as materials in general or create some new materials.

With the onset of Web 2.0, I have seen how it has democratised various areas of entertainment from citizen reporting, self-published authors to video entertainment free from editors at large corporations. This has also entered into the space of language education in various forms: asynchronous language teaching videos with comments to interact with the author; online one-to-one tuition open to anyone with internet access with sufficient bandwidth, multilingual code-switching learner-generated materials amongst others. This access “afforded online interaction and user-created materials, and these altered the authorship paradigm, as well as blurring the line between materials and tools that produce them” (Mishan & Timmis, 2015, p. 94). The relationship between materials as product and materials as process are much more tightly interwoven and it is this change in relationship which pushed me towards creating a video:

https://www.powtoon.com/s/eQfeM7XuKUh/1/m

Due to time constraints, and the majority of the time spent investigating the video editing tools, the video was very short and incomplete. The idea was to provide learners with the instructions and the selection of reading/viewing materials in the video so that it was self-contained and the jamboard was separate and could be introduced after viewing the video. This would allow me to set the default time to view each article/video before moving on and ensure that learners would all finish the first viewing approximately at the same time. Video also allows learners to view any part of the video again at their leisure should they want to, in computer science, this is known as persistence and is one of the new affordances of internet connectivity in education. This is the material as product aspect but offers new ways of working that are not possible in the traditional classroom.

Then there is the material as process aspect that the online video creation and editing opened up to the learners. They can create their own videos using the online software and access different modes of communication such as video, images, text, audio, emoji, memes or any combination of those or modes that I have not considered. This affords the learner the opportunity to consider the “redundancies and complementarity between the different modes” (Guichon & Cohen, 2016, p. 663), and facilitates learners’ development in digital literacies so that they “know how to operate these technologies, and to use them safely, wisely and productively” (Dudeney & Hockly, 2016, p. 166). This video creation task could supplant the writing task that Ingunn had proposed in week 7, and had we had more time to discuss and evaluate our ideas, we may have decided upon video creation as a worthwhile productive task.

The way this task is modelled by the input given to the learners is something I value and is something I consider when choosing how to present materials. This is in contrast to Anna and Siân’s branching-narrative reading and discussion task. The complexity of creating such a narrative is challenging for established writers and would most definitely present a challenge to learners. Again, the persistent nature of online pages is something that would be difficult to replicate in the traditional learning environment, especially the ability to give access to an unlimited number of readers (servers willing) at any time of the day. Learners can re-read and try different branches at their leisure, thus reinforcing extensive reading habits and improving reading speed. Editing the manuscript is also much quicker and easier with spell checkers that highlight typographical, spelling as well as grammatical errors. Intellectual property is easier to protect in this instance due to the difficulty of reproducing the manuscript, so should Anna and Siân wish to share the URL, they can retain their credits for putting the work in to produce the story. The affordances of new technology often bring unforeseen drawbacks, in this case we have digital eye strain whose causes include the screen resolution, font size, screen contrast and screen luminance (Coles-Brennan, et al., 2019).

Video and online reading were two areas utilised a lot on this module. Each seminar was preceded by a recorded lecture using the Panopto platform and the key and recommended readings were mostly available online. Let’s take a look at Panopto and the digital books and articles, and the affordances of these platforms of delivery. A key difference between how I intended to use video and the Panopto videos used by the tutors is the flipped  approach where we are expected to watch the video before the seminar not during class.

Layout of Panopto page

Unfortunately, many of the features of Panopto were unknown to me until I looked into it in more detail for this post, and probably to quite a few of the other students on this module are unaware, too. Part of this is due to the Virtual Learning Environment being able to play video directly from Panopto thus severely limiting some of its more powerful functions, and the relatively recent requirement for tutors to use Panopto to deliver lectures.

Panopto Captions function

The persistent nature of Panopto videos means that I can watch the video and jump to any section. This video is only 35 minutes but for significantly longer videos, there is the option to increase playback speed up to two times. Captions are provided to provide another mode of input and was something I found useful when watching these at 1.75 times the normal playback speed. Having the captions available as a transcript is useful to search for keywords and taking notes. The captions are automatically generated, and errors do creep in, for example when Paul stammers on wind at 40”, the closed captions produced won’t wind. However, their accuracy is impressive and when used in conjunction with the audio, there are rarely any issues.

Panopto Discussion Tab

As you can see, there was no discussion for this lecture because this feature was not known about by any participants. One of the criticisms about the video lecture was the lack of opportunity to ask questions that would be available in a live environment. I think this feature would have been invaluable to me and probably to other students. As mentioned before, there are also drawbacks. This feature is separate and distinct from other communication tools that students and tutors regularly use, so would require students and tutors to check Panopto regularly to comment. There would be every chance that discussions would be among very few students if any.

Panopto Notes Tab

Another feature that I would have taken advantage of had I known of its existence, although I replicated this in OneNote, so its usefulness is questionable. Notes are synchronised to the times in the video which is something not available (but replicable albeit requiring more work) when making notes elsewhere. Given that some students made notes on a physical notepad, this feature is nice to have but not essential.

Bookmarks is another useful feature that I would have used but, again, is not essential. It would have made discussing lecture videos during seminars easier with the time stamps at hand and the notes tab.

The search function would have been incredibly powerful when combined with the other tabs. Looking at Panopto holistically, it is a powerful platform and one we did not take advantage of. We griped privately that we rarely ever discussed the lecture video in seminars and the option was there albeit only in text form. This asynchronous text chat function offers opportunities to discuss the lecture in more detail than is possible in a lecture theatre and affords multiple speakers and conversations at any given time spread over the entire lecture. I can imagine Paul and Theresa seeding the lecture video with questions and comments to engage those watching.

When Mishan and Timmis (2015, p. 91) noted that creating materials in an environment permeated by technological “requires fresh thinking in the design of materials within it”, I think that the Panopto suite of functions captures this idea well. Unfortunately, this module is over, and I cannot give you my verdict, based on my experience, of all of its functionality.

Ultimately “what really matters to teachers and learners, however, remains the effect of the particular materials on learners and on the quality of the learning” (Tomlinson & Masuhara, 2018, p. 183), and just having the video playback functions fulfilled the basic requirement and it is pure speculation whether utilising the other areas of Panopto would have brought about greater quality in our learning.

For the reading, it will be relatively brief. Texts were generally available in pdf format to be read either through an online reader or one installed on our device. Standardised formats are a godsend in comparison to the myriad proprietary formats in previous generations. However, in a recurring theme of benefits and drawbacks, the ability to lock documents or heavily control the contents of the pdf made quotations and taking notes more difficult given the normal functionality of word processing on a computer. Inconsistent application of these content locks meant that some documents allowed unfettered use of its contents while others only allowed viewing and nothing else. Others assigned a percentage that could be copied. Although I did not use the functionality of annotating pdf documents, other students did and is something that brings digital documents to parity with the printed text. One of the most welcome advances is the hyperlinked text. When authors give URLs, a quick click and one can view the page in question, whether said page still exists is another problem altogether. That is one of the plethora of quality-of-life improvements that Web 2.0 has brought.

Despite all the advances of technology, one thing that has not changed is that “all material needs to be evaluated in the classroom and adjusted to make it work effectively” (Motteram, 2016, p. 136). Whether that classroom is physical or virtual, the affordances of that environment dictate how and what materials we can exploit. In a bricks-and-mortar classroom, it is infinitely easier to capture language produced by learners to turn that into materials for the whole group, but in a virtual setting, the persistence of text chat opens new avenues to user-generated materials that can be exploited in ways that we have only begun to scratch the surface of. Online promises to democratise the creation of materials and enrich language learning in a way that, only a short time ago, we could not imagine. I believe we are moving beyond merely substituting traditional materials with what is possible online and are well on our way to redefining tasks in ways that were previously inconceivable (Puentedura, 2015).

References

Coles-Brennan, C., Sulley, A. & Young, G., 2019. Management of digital eye strain. Clinical and Experimental Optometry Review, Volume 102, pp. 18-29.

Dudeney, G. & Hockly, N., 2016. Literacies, technology and language teaching. In: F. Farr & L. Murray, eds. The Routledge handbook of language learning and technology. s.l.:Taylor & Francis Group, pp. 166-180.

Guichon, N. & Cohen, C., 2016. Multimodality and CALL. In: F. Farr & L. Murray, eds. The Routledge handbook of language learning and technology. s.l.:Taylor & Francis Group, pp. 660-676.

Mishan, F. & Timmis, I., 2015. Mateials Development for TESOL. Epub ed. Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press.

Motteram, G., 2016. Language materials development in a digital age. In: F. Farr & L. Murray, eds. The Routledge handbook of language learning and technology. London: Routledge, pp. 132-147.

Puentedura, R. R., 2015. SAMR: A Brief Introduction. [Online]
Available at: http://hippasus.com/rrpweblog/archives/2015/10/SAMR_ABriefIntro.pdf
[Accessed 6 June 2021].

Tomlinson, B. & Masuhara, H., 2018. The Complete Guide to the Theory and Practice of Materials Development for Language Learning. Hoboken, New Jersey: John Wiley & Sons.

This week’s focus brought the concept of learner profiles to mind. Materials and tasks found in published books have a level of ability in mind, and this extends across all skills and cognitive ability. However, jagged profiles are quite common, where learners are markedly more able in some aspects of language but far less able in others. “Recall skills are more demanding than recognition” (Little & King, 2013, p. 421) and the “visual sense is stronger than the auditory” (ibid), to which Little and King offer their own Spanish skills as an example, noting their reading to be B1 but speaking to be A1 according to the Common European Framework of Reference for Languages (Council of Europe, 2021) and the expectation is that this kind of disparity should be quite common and, anecdotally, matches my experience in the classroom and level testing.

Maley (2011) suggests skills modules that can be tailored to the learner’s ability. This appears to be a possible solution to jagged profiles but there are some inherent drawbacks, namely the need for an experienced teacher to knit the different levels, topics, and language into a cohesive course for the learners. This is before taking into account the mixed abilities inherent in any classroom, where we may find that a CEFR B1 class requires all the levels for all of the skills, and the lesson preparation workload spirals out of control. This conundrum strikes at the heart of difficulties faced in classrooms across the globe, and whether teachers argue for mixed-ability classes or streamed classes, differentiation is the theme that intertwines through all of them. We cannot get away from the need for differentiation.

As a group, we were asked to prepare a short explanation of a task that we have used or have participated in, and thought was particularly effective. Before I continue, we need to define task more clearly because task, activity and exercise are commonly used interchangeably in everyday parlance but have subtle differences. Ellis (2011) places tasks as a subset of activity, but Richards (2021) takes it further and adds exercise as a narrower form of task, ranging from less controlled/focus on meaning to very controlled/focus on form.

A diagram of Richards’ (2021) definition of exercise, task, and activity

Vasiljevic (2011) highlights three components to the task: language input of some kind; a clearly defined outcome; and activities that learners must complete. I think that this is quite a neat summation of a task. Applied to the task I presented to the group; it would pass muster as a task.

The task I presented was a skills-focused task, working on top-down processing, listening, and noticing paralinguistic features of communication. I have used the BBC’s One-minute World News (BBC, 2021) for this task with a range of learners from varying levels of ability. I usually use it as a dictogloss activity with three viewings, the first time silent and the following two times with sound. The aim is to reconstruct the news four-sometimes-three headlines. It has language input, aural and sometimes written text. The goal is clearly defined, and there are activities the learners must complete. Under Ellis’ (2011) terms for defining tasks, my choice would be described as unfocused (generally communicative), input- and output-providing (both reading/listening and speaking/writing), and a closed outcome (there is a clear end).

This is something that I often use to help learners notice the paralinguistic features of communication, and help their communicative competence improve. The items featured on the news are topical and learners will more likely than not have read or heard about one of the featured stories. With many learners having internet-connected devices, it is possible to allow learners to view the video on their own phones or tablets and pause, replay as much as they need. There are some drawbacks as the news bulletin is aimed at native speakers so it may not be suitable for novice learners. Now that the BBC use newscasters with a range of accents, it may prove too challenging for some learners that have not been exposed to a range of English accents. The topics tend to be less upbeat, and learners have complained about the need to remind them about what an awful world we live in. They are also likely to involve politics, which is a big turn off for learners. The one-minute news is only available online so would not be suitable for offline classrooms.

In contrast to the task I presented, Laura offered something much more light-hearted and fun: a bag game. The aim was to create a story from mystery items in a bag, with learners taking turns to fish something from the bag and somehow incorporate it into the story. Based on the discussion of tasks so far and Richards’ (2021) definitions of exercise, task, and activity, this would be more activity than task. Placing this activity at the centre of the lesson with a focus on narrative tenses and storytelling, I could imagine a very fun lesson based on a test-teach-test lesson structure with studying sandwiched between two very fun stories.

With both tasks, I have eschewed any macro-evaluations in favour of micro-evaluations (Ellis, 2011), simply because teachers are very much focused on the effectiveness of the tasks we set our learners, and we rarely look at the overarching success of the course. Both tasks are unfocused and offer considerable challenges to demonstrating learning. With the one-minute news, it is almost impossible to ascertain with any degree of certainty that learners do not practise top-down processing and do not notice paralinguistic features of communication. However, by measuring learners’ output, it can give us some insight into which skills they are utilising to accomplish the task. Similarly, Laura’s bag game used in a test-teach-test structure would give clearer insight into learners’ use of narrative tenses and understanding of narrative structure in English.

You can probably see, from the focus of my presented task, why I liked the skills modules suggested by Maley (2011), but also why I am drawn to these unfocused tasks that have a lot of flexibility depending on what activities the learners are required to complete. I think they offer the differentiation without having to drown in a sea of worksheets and fast-finisher activities, which is ironic that Laura likes to use her bag game as a filler at the end of class when her learners have finished everything she had planned for them too quickly.

References

BBC, 2021. BBC One-minute World News. [Online]
Available at: https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/p02cfn23
[Accessed 3 June 2021].

Council of Europe, 2021. Common European Framework of Reference for Languages (CEFR). [Online]
Available at: https://www.coe.int/en/web/common-european-framework-reference-languages
[Accessed 1 June 2021].

Ellis, R., 2011. Macro- and micro-evaluations of task-based teaching. In: B. Tomlinson, ed. Materials development in language teaching. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, pp. 212-235.

Little, D. & King, L., 2013. A career in phonetics, applied linguistics and the public service. Language Teaching, 43(3), pp. 409-424.

Maley, A., 2011. Squaring the circle – reconciling materials as constraint with materials as empowerment. In: B. Tomlinson, ed. Materials development in language teaching. s.l.:Cambridge University Press, pp. 379-402.

Richards, J. C., 2021. Difference Between Task, Exercise and Activity. [Online]
Available at: https://www.professorjackrichards.com/difference-task-exercise-activity/
[Accessed 3 June 2021].

Vasiljevic, Z., 2011. The Predictive Evaluation of Language Learning Tasks. English Language Teaching, 4(1), pp. 3-10.

This was a very challenging seminar, in many ways, due to the difficulty of giving constructive feedback and the lack of familiarity between participants. Having experienced both sides of giving and receiving constructive feedback, it is a fine line one must tread between honest appraisal and taking into account personal feelings considering the amount of effort that has been put into creating the materials. Then there are the myriad beliefs that intersect and inform the production of materials and how and why they were created like that. There was also a considerable gradient of teaching experience amongst the group from zero to 16 years, and the associated professional development that can be accrued within that time frame. Ypsilandis (2002) cited Ross’ (2000) three characteristics of quality feedback: timely feedback, helpful feedback, and developmental feedback. He also contrasts this with poor feedback characteristics provided by Falchikov (1993): tonally negative, focused on trivial issues, and variable in its extent. As you can see, it is quite a tight rope to walk in giving feedback and evaluating the materials created by the other members of this module.

Jolly & Bolitho’s recursive process for materials creation

From listening to the presentations, it was clear that most of the students would agree that the process was much more similar to figure 5.2 and that not everyone started with learner need. It must be noted that the interpretation of learner needs was quite different among the group. Ingunn and I created a class profile to help us establish that the need did truly exist while other groups focused on more general problem areas that needed addressing at a cultural level rather than for a specifc set fo learners. The other approach was based on re-envisaging classic materials that appear in almost all mediated materials: giving and receiving directions. This blurred the line between mediated and unmediated (Mishan & Timmis, 2015), even though there was no editor or governmental department to oversee the mateirals development, they were created to be used in a very similar fashion to course books. It was quite interesting to see that teacher-driven desires regarding what to teach were prevalent and is something that was much discussed between my ex-colleagues and me when preparing for our classes.

After noting what we wanted from course book materials in previous sessions, it was quite clear that the gap between what we, as teachers, want and what is realistically achievable is quite considerable. This is in part could be attributed to the text-driven framework (Tomlinson & Masuhara, 2018, p. 144) that many of us experienced when working with published materials, in turn replicating the course book experience with texts more relevant to our learners or more “authentic”. This would inevitably lead to materials that more closely resembled those found in course books and replicating many of the strengths and weaknesses associated with them.

There were other examples of materials that simply would not be possible in traditional mediums, ie print. The addition of modern technology and the internet-connected classroom meant that classic tasks such as creating a board game are quicker and can be stored indefinitely online, and branching-narrative stories are possible to create, and iterate, edit, and publish much more easily than previously. Branching-narrative stories are commonly found in modern role-playing video games and encourage players to return to the game to find out how different choices pan out and affect the ending. This is a powerful motivator to encourage learners to revisit texts that they have already read, and help learners develop extensive reading skills because “we want our learners to be sufficiently motivated to want to do the reading” (Watkins, 2021) and “the only way they will get better at reading is by doing quite a lot of reading” (ibid). The creators of the story envisaged learners in a democracy of storytelling with debate and discussion about which branch of the story to continue along.

It was clear that technology has reached a point where teachers can, given sufficient time, create custom materials that look and function much like traditional course books, and enables types of activities that were difficult, if not impossible, to implement in the classroom. This includes previously covered materials such as infographics that can be readily produced as a final outcome task in one lesson. The wealth of resources available online allows professional-looking materials that have been tailored to a specific set of learners and can be easily modified for similar groups. The main barrier to creating these materials on a regular basis remains the same as ever: time. They require less but not yet an inconsequential amount of time.

References

Falchikov, N., 1993. Group Process Analysis: Self & Peer assessment of working together in a group. Education & Training Teaching International, 30(3), p. 275.

Mishan, F. & Timmis, I., 2015. Mateials Development for TESOL. Epub ed. Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press.

Ross, 2000. From a teacher Training Course hold in Thessaloniki. s.l., unpublished.

Tomlinson, B. & Masuhara, H., 2018. The Complete Guide to the Theory and Practice of Materials Development for Language Learning. Hoboken, New Jersey: John Wiley & Sons.

Watkins, P., 2021. What research tells us about reading skills and how to improve them. [Online]
Available at: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=STxXMt3YpF4
[Accessed 18 May 2021].

Ypsilandis, G. S., 2002. Feedback in Distance Education. Computer Assissted Language Learning, 15(2), pp. 167-181.

In my career teaching English as a second/foreign language, there have been few opportunities to collaborate to create materials, so being able to work with Ingunn was a great opportunity to have access to her expertise and her valuable input in materials design. Previously in my career, collaboration was more about dividing materials among teachers to produce in isolation and any collaboration was ad hoc rather than premeditated. This was produced in a primarily unmediated form, where it will “pass straight into the classroom” (Mishan & Timmis, 2015, p. 220) and less mediated, where “editors and government officials may influence the final form of the materials” (ibid) but in my case, it was senior teachers requesting edits rather than government departments getting involved.

Our process mirrored Jolly and Bolitho’s framework (figure 5.2) (2011, p. 112). We started with learner need and looked at previous lessons and performance of Ingunn’s learners. We identified areas in which the learners had performed poorly, which included top-down processing skills, collaborative learning, and learner autonomy, and allied this with recurring complaints that chosen reading texts and listening audio was too easy or difficult or was not very interesting, which is also known as differentiation.

figure 5.2: Jolly & Bolitho’s recursive process for materials creation

This was then matched with the Norwegian Directorate of Education and Training competence aims for English Language Learning to contextualise the materials for the learners. In this case, it is to explore and describe ways of living, ways of thinking, communication patterns and diversity in the English-speaking world (NDET, 2020). Initial ideas involved wall crawl/gallery-style activity, but upon closer inspection of the physical constraints of the classroom highlighted the impractical nature of this idea. Ingunn’s class is taught in a shared room with two other classes and under the restraints imposed by the pandemic, it is not possible for members of the class to wander freely across the entire space. This required the class to remain within the assigned space so we moved the gallery activity into the virtual realm riding atop a Jamboard. The initial idea was to “signal changes in tone and pace” (Scrivener, 2012, p. XXIX) in a concept for classroom management for young learners known as stirrers, to increase activity and alertness, and settlers, to reduce levels of activities and calm the learners. In this case it would have acted as a stirrer before the settler activity of reading or viewing the video.

Our previous experience of using Jamboard meant that aesthetics would necessarily be compromised due to the limited editing tools available. The materials were not intended for actual consumption, so this was acceptable. The online nature of the materials presented another challenge that many a teacher has fallen afoul. Preventing learners from accessing the text until it is time to view it was a key consideration because it is a common affliction of course book design that learners can complete the activities in the book at any time they wish, and teachers are generally powerless to stop this happening. Our solution was to present the hyperlinks on a separate page at the end.

One area that was not derived from the learner need was the writing task. It was also the only part of the task that had not been evaluated or iterated upon. We ran out of time before we could discuss how the writing task would integrate with the reading/listening task hence why it looks out of place in the grand scheme of the materials. Our process was mostly iterative and based on multiple evaluations of the material before use. We did not use this for teaching so post-lesson evaluation was not possible.

click to see jamboard

The expected set up for the task would be that learners are introduced to the context of spring festivals (brainstorm, discuss Norwegian spring festivals, discuss any spring festivals that learners know about and so on); introduce gist reading and explain that they must choose three articles out of the twelve that interest them by placing a sticky note with the number 1, 2 or 3 to indicate preference on the jamboard; remove any articles that learners have shown no interest in; learners have a minute to quickly read the three articles they have chosen using the links on jamboard; then they choose one to read/watch in more detail; and finally the learners share what they’ve been reading/watching with their group. We decided on this approach because it was something that traditional materials could not accomplish very easily but technology gives us these affordances. Even though there are no physical elements to our materials, we feel they are not too different from more traditional print materials and thus maintain face validity.

One thing that became clear was the recursive nature of how we produced our materials, and it was not a linear beginning-to-end creation process as envisaged in Jolly and Bolitho’s framework (2011) for materials creation (see figure 5.1).

figure 5.1: Jolly & Bolitho’s linear process of materials creation

We can see that this activity can be reproduced with hard copies, in the case of the reading texts but the video(s) cannot. This is a remix of tasks that have been used before but in a way that previous iterations of technology simply cannot do. This necessarily means that the materials we have created cannot be replicated easily in a lower-tech teaching environment without substantial alterations and extended preparation time. The bespoke nature of teaching and learning, where every context is different is the challenge for material creators. Although certain materials can be recycled, they can rarely be re-used as is without some acknowledgement of the new context in which it is being used. Dogme-like approaches to teaching allied with technology to fully utilise learner-generated materials may be the bridge between the perceived inflexibility of published materials and those that best meet our learners’ needs.

References

Jolly, D. & Bolitho, R., 2011. A framework for materials writing. In: B. Tomlinson, ed. Materials development in language teaching. s.l.:Cambridge University Press, pp. 107-134.

Mishan, F. & Timmis, I., 2015. Mateials Development for TESOL. Epub ed. Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press.

NDET, 2020. udir.no. [Online]
Available at: https://www.udir.no/lk20/eng01-04/kompetansemaal-og-vurdering/kv4?lang=eng
[Accessed 17 03 2021].

Scrivener, J., 2012. Classroom Managment Techniques. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

Tomlinson, B. & Masuhara, H., 2018. The Complete Guide to the Theory and Practice of Materials Development for Language Learning. Hoboken, New Jersey: John Wiley & Sons.

In today’s blog entry, I will be discussing how I moved on, albeit slightly, from video as “glorified audio” (Goldstein, 2017, p. 24), which is considered an anachronistic model but one that I have seen practised in many classrooms during my career (and have actively indulged in myself). Video and image share many similar qualities and we can use video in the same way as images but with some key differences. The pedagogy behind video and written text followed similar development trajectories but as the way we use written text in class has changed, so has video. We cannot ignore the increasing prevalence of video in our lives helped along by the proliferation of high-speed internet connectivity everywhere we go. This has led to realisation that video is no longer considered a passive activity and part of this is also attributable to the rise of social media and the immediacy of reactions to watching content. The final area I will touch on is the importance of paralinguistic features of communication and how video offers something that traditional print-based materials could not.

One of the main issues I have with using video in lessons is the length. I personally find that 2-to-3 minutes sufficient, but the average YouTube video is approximately 12 minutes (Tankovska, 2021). TED talks are up to 18 minutes long (TED, 2020). This is in line with how I treat audio and I find 6-to-7-minute segments in higher level course books incredibly challenging to work with. I would often ask learners to do those listening tasks in their own time, although many did not. The other issue which I did not really consider was the socio-linguistic context of video and how it can reveal much about other cultures (Clare, 2017, pp. 35-36).

I was pleasantly surprised when another student presented an animated video, Cuerdas (Cuerdas Cortometraje Oficial, 2014), that she had used for English language teaching, which was entirely in Spanish. Thus, highlighting the importance of the moving image over the audio track. Although long at over 10 minutes, there were themes, motifs and issues that would appeal to learners and bring an emotional response (Witcher & Donaghy, 2014). The video clip I presented was a trail for a BBC television series about Valley Boys in Wales, which I had used in teaching adult South Korean learners. This was rooted in my reluctance to forego audio but also because of the learners’ desire to hear a broader range of British accents and learn more about British culture. This clip reflected changes happening in South Korea and was chosen because it would trigger emotional responses from the learners, touching on gender biases, wealth, age and human aesthetics. A lot of my focus with video is on bringing the paralinguistic features of communication to the forefront of the learners’ mind and also the top-down processing of this information in conjunction with audio information. I must admit that there were issues with “cognitive overload” (Guichon & Cohen, 2016, p. 666) for some learners with so many variables to work with and no control over the playback. In hindsight, making the video available to learners to watch and playback at their leisure may have reduced the cognitive cost (ibid).

My use of video, and it seems many of the other students’ on this course, follow the traditional teaching format of pre-viewing task, while-viewing task, and post-viewing task commonly associated with reading/listening texts (Donaghy, 2019). In much the same way that teaching reading/listening skills has moved away from this model, use of video has begun to move away as well.

Video as warmer, to activate schema, was a popular use among our cohort of students on this course. Jamie Keddie presented us with a task we have used with our learners: the pause-predict-play activity (2020) but he goes further in developing the tasks derived from his chosen video so that learners are not constrained by what is presented on screen. The video’s appearance in his lesson is inverted and appears at the end upon completion of the tasks based on his chosen video. He goes even further and creates an additional video to use with the original. Suffice to say that none of us went that far in our use of video. He also talks about the motivation behind the creation of the video he used and links it with monetisation and advertising revenue. It is a very holistic approach to using video in the classroom compared to the more traditional usage discussed earlier.

This treatment of video makes the activity much more active than how we traditionally think about watching video (Clare, 2017). We are moving into higher order thinking skills and with the tools available to us now, we can remix and reimagine videos and share these responses. This is something that wasn’t possible only a short time ago and leans on “remix literacy” (Dudeney & Hockly, 2016, p. 173). The important development is how the task we set learners has evolved and the focus is moving towards communicative competency over grammar or lexical competency. It is in this light of communicative competency that the paralinguistic features of communication become an important feature rather than a visual representation of grammar or language. This is all bound in “cultural and intercultural literacy” (ibid, pp.172-173) and is often highlighted in the different hand gestures employed in various cultures around the world. As educators and as learners, awareness of how actions (or inactions) are perceived are as important as knowing common learner errors exhibited by people from various cultural and language backgrounds.

It is this change from glorified audio to central role in digital literacies that marks video out as an important feature of language learning in the future. Learners will not only consume video but will engage critically with video content and redefine and remix it in their response and/or critique of it. The ubiquity of cameras and recording devices coupled with increasingly easy access to internet connectivity will only further the evolution of video in language learning.

References

Clare, A., 2017. The power of video. In: K. Donaghy & D. Xerri, eds. The Image in English Language Teaching. Malta: ELT Council, pp. 33-42.

Cuerdas Cortometraje Oficial, 2014. CUERDAS english subtitles. [Online]
Available at: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vtrHIa0RkAo
[Accessed 17 March 2021].

Donaghy, K., 2019. Using Film to Teach Languages in a World of Screens. In: C. Herrero & I. Vanderschelden, eds. Using film and media in the language classroom: reflections on research-led teaching. s.l.:Multilingual Matters, pp. 27-43.

Dudeney, G. & Hockly, N., 2016. Literacies, technology and language teaching. In: F. Farr & L. Murray, eds. The Routledge handbook of language learning and technology. s.l.:Taylor & Francis Group, pp. 166-180.

Goldstein, B., 2017. A history of video in ELT. In: K. Donaghy & D. Xerri, eds. The Image in English Language Teaching. Malta: ELT Council, pp. 23-32.

Guichon, N. & Cohen, C., 2016. Multimodality and CALL. In: F. Farr & L. Murray, eds. The Routledge handbook of language learning and technology. s.l.:Taylor & Francis Group, pp. 660-676.

Keddie, J., 2020. A video prediction activity: “Things that could go wrong at a wedding”. [Online]
Available at: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RSMNzF-9Qro
[Accessed 15 March 2021].

Tankovska, H., 2021. Average YouTube video length as of December 2018, by category(in minutes). [Online]
Available at: https://www.statista.com/statistics/1026923/youtube-video-category-average-length/#:~:text=According%20to%20the%20report%2C%20the%20average%20video%20length,as%20of%20December%202018%2C%20by%20category%20%28in%20minutes%29
[Accessed 10 May 2021].

TED, 2020. Organize a local TEDx event. [Online]
Available at: https://www.ted.com/participate/organize-a-local-tedx-event/tedx-organizer-guide/speakers-program/event-program
[Accessed 10 May 2021].

Witcher, A. & Donaghy, K., 2014. A Visual Manifesto for Language Teaching. [Online]
Available at: https://vimeo.com/113420504
[Accessed 10 May 2021].

In modern course books that are used in classrooms around the world, we expect there to be text and visuals (Rea, et al., 2013, p. 30; Donaghy & Xerri, 2017, p. 3; Ajayi, 2012, p. 16) and even a cursory glance at what appears in course books would give us indicators that not all images and visuals are integral to the language learning process. Those that are integrated into the language learning can be referent or be springboards to greater language output and investigation of the image and the author of said image. This is one side of the visual literacy coin where learners will inevitably produce visuals themselves.

Bowl of ramen

I am not quite sure why I feel so strongly about this image, it could be how it is used which is ultimately the most important factor (Tomlinson & Masuhara, 2018, p. 327). Hill (2015) would categorise the bowl of ramen as “purely for decoration” (p. 160) and after discussing this with other students, we cannot ascertain an alternative function for this image. Before we continue, we should define what we mean by decoration. Hill (2015, p. 159) juxtaposes decoration with visuals that are specifically used in the book and qualifies this with a disclaimer that the teacher’s book may have additional information regarding how an image may be used but discounted it as unlikely. Although I feel that this dichotomy of image use is simplistic and does not necessarily cover all the types of visuals found in course books, it is a suitable starting point from which to analyse and evaluate their use. Duchastel’s taxonomy offers another  way to categorise illustrations in instructional texts:

1. affective: provided to enhance interest and motivation;
2. attentive: intended to attract and direct attention;
3. didactic: intended to facilitate learning by showing something difficult to convey in words;
4. supportive: provided for less able learners
5. retentional: provided to facilitate memorisation.

It can be noted that there are no other images on this page (although the image is truncated, I assure you, there are no further visuals on that page) so it serves the purpose of “breaking up an otherwise relentless black and white type on the page” (Dellar, 2015), so could be considered affective in nature. Although not utilised directly for learning, the lexis and accompanying visual act as a resource that teachers can draw upon should they wish.

Dellar (2015) notes in his presentation that this is a limitation of visuals where it has little-to-no potential to generate language output from learners. In many ways, this is reducing learners to a passive viewing of visuals (Whitcher, 2018, p. 17) which is not how we interact with images, especially in the social media space. We engage much more with visuals such as memes and gifs which are intricately linked with our communication online. However, this does not necessarily fit with Dellar’s view that images should have “the potential to bring into being a thousand words” (2015), as we know from our own experience of memes and gifs, their message is complete with no additions possible.

An infographic is not necessarily a visual but a vessel which more language and ideas can be extracted than is necessarily contained within. As preparation for the seminar, I created a crude mock-up infographic about loot boxes in video games.

figure 1

It only took about 5 minutes to create and contains a lot of text but conveys much more than equivalent text or visuals only. Previously, infographics would have taken more time and effort to create but websites and apps such as diagrams.net, which I used to create this, can revolutionise the way we create and use infographics in learning.

Loot boxes are virtual rewards exchanged by games for some virtual currency exclusive to that game. This currency is usually by accrued either by playing or can be purchased for fiat money. The loot box will give random rewards of varying quality based on a probability table with higher quality rewards less frequent than those of lesser quality. I chose loot boxes because it is something that any person that has played free-to-play/freemium games will have experienced and highlighted some of the issues that people may not be aware of when partaking in loot box culture. This is, in my opinion, a possible catalyst for discussing one’s own relationship with loot boxes and one’s own feelings about the issues raised.

Even though infographics are excellent for portraying a lot of information in an accessible way, they are not commonly found in materials. There are myriad reasons why they may not feature as prominently in published materials but creating them then dissecting them is one way we can meet Dellar’s criteria for using visuals in materials.

figure 2

This is where the notion of pure and impure offers from visuals can offer us some insight into what they can achieve (Liu & Qu, 2014, p. 142). Unlike referent alphanumeric text, visuals and images are not pure. 木/樹/tree/arbre/شجرة/दरख्‍़त can be considered pure, there is no ambiguity but the tree in figure 2 is impure and is open to interpretation and is less fixed than the words. To Brits that follow politics, it is clearly the logo for a political party, to arborists it is an oak tree. Each viewer takes away something different. In a perverse twist of language teaching, the visual needs to be rescued by text, whereas we often deploy images and visuals to help understand written text.  To some, figure 2 is meaningless and that is why visual literacy is becoming a distinct part of curricula around the world (Donaghy & Xerri, 2017, p. 6).

The Canadian common curriculum framework breaks down visual literacy into two parts: viewing and representing (Begoray, 2001, p. 202). These are loosely congruent to receptive and productive respectively. We can apply Bloom’s Taxonomy to visual literacy and the use of visuals. Lower order thinking merely require a description of the visual and as we move into higher order thinking, we explore how the visual was created and what is included and what is left out. At the highest order of thinking, we are delving into the motivation behind the visual and the relative success of it. The Canadian common curriculum framework gives a fuller breakdown:

Questions for learners in visual literacy

These questions can also be applied to visuals that learners create in their language output, and in the modern communication landscape, use of visuals and text are becoming the normal mode of communication. To be able to understand Roll Safe, Picard facepalm and myriad other image memes and to utilise these in one’s own communication requires an increased visual literacy.

References

Ajayi, L., 2012. How Teachers Deploy Multimodal Textbooks to Enhance Language Learning. TESOL Journal, Volume 6, pp. 16-35.

Begoray, D., 2001. Through a class darkly: Visual literacy in the classroom. Canada Journal of Education, 26(2), pp. 201-217.

Dellar, H., 2015. Can a Picture Tell a Thousand Words?. [Online]
Available at: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Py2R0CLvLIo&list=PLgLV1FQPwNRc2Y9Re7Rlzq8qx-bS9gL4I&index=4&t=41s
[Accessed 17 March 2021].

Donaghy, K. & Xerri, D., 2017. The Image in English Language Teaching. Malta: ELT Council.

Hill, D. A., 2015. The Visual Elements in EFL Coursebooks. In: B. Tomlinson, ed. Developing Materials for Language Teaching. s.l.:Bloomsbury, pp. 157-166.

Liu, X. & Qu, D., 2014. Exploring the Multimodality of EFL Textbooks for Chinese College Students: A Comparative Study. RELC Journal, 45(2), pp. 135-150.

Rea, D. et al., 2013. English Unlimited B1+. s.l.:Cambridge University Press.

Tomlinson, B. & Masuhara, H., 2018. The Complete Guide to the Theory and Practice of Materials Development for Language Learning. Hoboken, New Jersey: John Wiley & Sons.

Whitcher, A., 2018. Image makers: the new language learners of the 21st century. In: K. Donaghy & D. Xerri, eds. The Image in English Language Teaching. Floriana, Malta: ELT Council, pp. 13-22.

It is pretty safe to say that every teacher adapts materials to some extent, even those created by the teacher themselves. Supplementing, maybe not so many. Adaptation and supplementing lesson materials usually springs from a learner need: be it cultural, learner specific, class specific or teacher specific. The reasons are myriad, but the goal is the same—to make something better suited to “specific learners, teachers and contexts for the purpose of facilitating effective learning” (Tomlinson & Masuhara, 2018, p. 82). Some of the more common reasons for adapting or supplementing include responding to dynamics in the classroom, the personalities of the learners, syllabus constraints, availability of resources and expectations and motivations of the learners (Mishan & Timmis: 2015).

Adaptation and supplementing may be similar but are distinct. Adapt implies a change to the given materials either through subtracting, adding, or re-writing parts of the materials. However, supplementing implies that something is required to fill a gap in the material; “a lack has been identified” so supplementary materials are required (McGrath, 2013, p. 128). Adaptation can be classified as “ad hoc adaptation and principled adaptation” (Mishan & Timmis, 2015, p. 101) and as the names suggests, ad hoc entails changes made in the moment based on teachers’ intuition or evaluation of the unfolding situation in the classroom. A teacher’s intuition is not innate but something gained over years of experience in different teaching environments and different learners, so it could be conceived as subconsciously accessing one’s experience. Principled adaptation implies more forethought and reasons underpinning the change and/or additions. This may involve the teacher’s beliefs in language learning such as learner-centred tasks or activities, or the importance of personalisation which may be lacking in the materials available. It could be a change of context for cultural reasons or learner needs and the materials need to be tweaked to fit the new context.

My teaching definitely encompasses all of the above, but the extent to which I have done so has changed over time as my beliefs, professional development, and experience have evolved. My changing behaviour could be encapsulated in Shawer’s (2010, p. 176) categorisation of teacher behaviour based on his research on degrees of adherence to curriculum materials: curriculum-maker, who develops a curriculum without using curriculum materials and bases course content on assessment of learner needs; curriculum-developer, who supplements and adapts curriculum materials; and curriculum-transmitter, who adheres closely to the curriculum materials.

Early in my career, prior to and shortly after gaining a certificate in English Language Teaching, I was heavily reliant on the materials provided and changed activities based on suggestions and advice from colleagues, so would fit Shawer’s curriculum-transmitter category. Lack of experience and lack of awareness and/or development of my beliefs limited the tools available to my younger self in planning and executing lessons. However, with more experience and training, I began to adapt and supplement lessons with activities from resource books, suggestions from other teachers, and some of my own ideas, which broadly fits with the curriculum-developer category. Although not consciously aware, I was responding to learner needs and the cultural context of the teaching environment. My first real taste of driving the curriculum myself was on the JET programme, which is a cultural exchange programme run by the Japanese Ministry of Education, Sport, Science and Technology where participants are placed in government schools around the country to teach English. It was by this point I had my basic language teaching qualification and several years of teaching behind me. Faced with learners who were academically strong but were communicatively poor, it was clear that the type of communicative activities set out in the curriculum would never be attainable by most of the learners. The needs analysis clearly pointed at a disparity between productive and receptive skills and the curriculum was created from scratch to meet this need, eschewing the course book in the process. Nowadays, I find that I readily move between all three types of materials use depending on learner needs, time constraints, available adaptations from colleagues. My last role in ELT before enrolling on this course was part teacher, part trainer, and part teaching support which entailed a substantial amount of materials creation and adaptation to support the courses being taught.

Shawer’s categories seem to encapsulate three clear stages/types of materials adaptation and supplementing, but our discussions concluded that there were very few real curriculum-makers and curriculum-transmitters through volition. Institutional policies were the drivers that pushed teachers towards either end of the spectrum, such as little-to-no guidance on how oral communication classes tied in with grammar and lexis classes, or teaching methodology and materials controlled by government ministries with emphasis on assessment results. Shawer (ibid) presents the categories in relation to experience, and intuition would make me agree but a member of our group began his career in English teaching faced with the role of curriculum-maker, bearing in mind the caveats that come with being a newly trained teacher such as minimal assessment and needs analysis training, and less awareness of methodologies, approaches, and second language acquisition. This experience brought into question how we define the three categories, such as unprincipled materials creation, adaptation, and supplementing being considered a syllabus/curriculum.

The relationship between curriculum-maker, curriculum-developer, and curriculum-transmitter

We thought the relationship would be better represented with loci rather than the three distinct categories used in Shawer’s research. We felt that teachers are always reacting to learners and making changes, be it grading language, reformulating instructions, stopping activities that are not working, extending activities to give learners more time to complete the ask or practise the target language more. At the extremes of adherence to curriculum materials, we discussed with teachers that identified as maker or transmitter but even in these cases, curriculum materials were referenced for the curriculum-maker, and curriculum materials were open to interpretation, albeit limited, in the case of curriculum transmitter. Shawer does not define how much or how little adaptation defines the three different categories.

The final activity of the session was to adapt some materials from a course book, either English Unlimited B1+ (Rea, et al., 2013, pp. 30-37) or something we used in our classes. No one in our group had completed this optional group but I suggested possible adaptations of the English Unlimited course book. I took the activities from page 30 to create a lesson focused on talking about the learners’ accidents and risk-taking when they were young and whether they agreed with the findings from the reading text. The learners would review reading for gist and dealing with unknown lexis as well as some autonomous learning practice. The topic would be introduced with the photograph of the flight attendant to elicit safety, risk and accidents as well as activating schema.

English Unlimited B1+ p30

References

McGrath, I., 2013. Teaching Materials and the roles of EFL/ESL teachers. s.l.:Bloomsbury Academic.

Mishan, F. & Timmis, I., 2015. Mateials Development for TESOL. Epub ed. Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press.

Rea, D. et al., 2013. English Unlimited B1+. s.l.:Cambridge University Press.

Shawer, S. F., 2010. Classroom-level curriculum development: EFL teachers as curriculum-developers, curriculum-makers and curriculum-transmitters. Teaching ans Teacher Education, Volume 26, pp. 173-184.

Tomlinson, B. & Masuhara, H., 2018. The Complete Guide to the Theory and Practice of Materials Development for Language Learning. Hoboken, New Jersey: John Wiley & Sons.