Differentiating Activities in the Classroom

Differentiation has already been briefly discussed in the ELT Glossary, and you might like to start by checking out what was said there. in this article we go into more detail looking at...

• Why differentiation might be necessary with different learner types and in different learning contexts
• How activities and classroom management techniques can be differentiated to cater for the varying needs of different learners in the class.

1. With what learner types or in what learning contexts might differentiation be necessary?

• Learning Context : Mixed Level groups     In small language schools it often happens that a learner is placed in a class because they are just above or below the level, but there is no other suitable class for them at the time they require. They may therefore either not have control of language items/subskills which the others have covered, or already know items/subskills which the others need to cover fully “from scratch”. I have also had learners in a class who had already repeated a previous level (A2), had still not reached the required standard for B1, but the school decided to let them continue rather than risk losing the client. The teacher therefore has to ensure the lower level learners can follow the course while not boring the higher level learners.

• Learning Context : Mixed Ability groups   Even if groups are all at the same average level, some may have a “spiky profile” (ie be at the level in some systems/skills, but weak in others – eg be fluent but highly inaccurate, or be weaker than the stated level in one skill only, such as  listening). Groups may also contain learners who are at the “correct” level, but simply take longer to assimilate new information. The teacher therefore has to ensure that the activities meet the needs of both the weak and strong learners.

• Learning Context : Multilingual groups  Differences in the learners’ L1s will affect the ease at which they can assimilate new items and develop new skills.  Eg Arabic learners at elementary level will have difficulty distinguishing between /p/ and /b/ phonemes and will need both receptive and productive practice which other learners, including speakers of most European L1s will not need. 

• Learner type : Learners with Special Needs  These may be learning difficulties or physical impairments. Learners with learning difficulties eg Attention Deficit Disorder, especially if combined with Hyperactivity) will not be able to concentrate as long as most learners on low-paced activities; learners with hearing impairments may have difficulty hearing recorded listenings or the teacher, while those who are visually impaired may have difficulty reading materials or seeing what is written on the board.

• Learner Type : Personality Differences      Despite actual strengths and weaknesses, learners may lie on scales ranging from extrovert to introvert, confident to insecure and anxious, dominant to shy etc. The teacher will have to handle each of these learners in a different way to ensure they a) feel happy in the classroom and with the course and b) do not have a negative effect on other learners and the general class rapport.

2. How can activity types and classroom management techniques  be differentiated to lead to effective learning by all the students in the class?

(NB: Notice that the underlined sections of each point directly answer the question “how”, while italicised  sections explicitly show why the action results in effective learning for all students)

a) Activity Types

- Mixed Level/Ability groups

• By adapting activity format to ensure the level of challenge is right for each learner. Eg: the lesson has moved on to the controlled practice stage and the Ls are working in pairs. Weaker Ls are given a simple gapfill task to do with the missing words in a box, in jumbled order. Stronger Ls are given the same task, but without the examples in the box. 

• By differentiating the language various learners are asked to practice so that each L can work at their own level. For example in the initial “Test” stage of a lesson on polite requests with a  Test –Teach-Test format, you might notice that different learners are using different requests exponents more or less accurately. Eg: Davide was still having problems with “Can you + infìnitive”  - so you correct and explain it for him, and then tell him that for the rest of the lesson you want to hear him using it. Ingrid was using “Can” and “Could” accurately but avoiding “Will” and “Would”, so you focus on these for her and tell her to practise them in the activities to come.  Belem on the other hand was using all the modals accurately - so you introduced “Do you think you could...” and told her that for the rest of the lesson she should go on practising that.  And so on. The  follow up activities may be gapfills, roleplays or other activities where the learners can use "their own" exponent, thus each working at their own level. 

• When teaching listening or reading, the “same” text can be used, but produced for different levels. Tasks can be the same or also differentiated, depending on the text and the learners’ needs.  Sites like “News in Levels” provide texts at three different levels, roughly A2, B1 and B2. Alternatively, the T. might choose an authentic text for strong, high-level learners, but write a simplified version for weaker or lower level group members. 

- Learners with Special Needs

• As mentioned above, deaf learners will not be able to follow recorded dialogues from the textbook during listening comprehension work. Their equivalent will be lip reading. A solution to the problem is for the teacher to stand directly in front of the deaf learner while the recording is playing and lip-synch it - changing position as necessary to indicate the different speakers. 

- Multilingual groups and others

• By breaking the lockstep. (Also useful in mixed ability/level classes and with learners with special needs such as slow processing problems.) This gives each L. the time they need to assimilate the language and ensures their grasp of the new language is stronger and they are not confused by being thrown into an activity at a level of communicative challenge which is too high for them.  Eg in a Presentation –Practice- Production lesson on a new structure, the T may know that the structure will cause more problems for some learners, because of L1 interference than others. After the initial presentation the T. may have ready several controlled practice activities, several semi-controlled activities and several free practice activities. All the learners completely the early Controlled Practice activities, but those who have no problems with them then pass to the Semi-Controlled Practice activities, while others work on further CP tasks with the T helping as necessary. The same progression continues through the freer activities. This means that some learners may not reach the free practice stage, but has the advantage that they have not been demotivated by being over-challenged and, in the end, will have learnt more. 

b) Classroom Management Techniques

- Mixed level/ability groups

• By using stronger learners as models for weaker ones. Eg the T has done choral repetition of a model sentence and has moved on to individual repetition. She asks several strong Ls to repeat individually (thus increasing the level of challenge for them) before calling on less able learners, so that they have the advantage of the extra models. 

• By allotting different roles to different learners during an activity. Eg Hadfield suggests that during small group discussion, a note taker can be nominated for the group. They don’t participate but only listen and take notes. After the discussion, they then report back to the whole class.  

If the strongest learners have this role, this prevents them from dominating, but still gives them an important role at the end. If a weaker student is the note-taker , the pressure is taken off them to produce language spontaneously during the activity, but they can prepare something to say at the end, which provides a sense of achievement.

• By using different pairings –  weak learners with stronger ones, alternating with each learner working with another learner of their own ability/level. The weak/strong pairing means that the stronger learner can help the weaker, explaining as necessary, but risks the stronger learner “taking over” and just doing it for the weaker learner. However, this pairing can be useful if the learners are asked to complete an activity individually and then compare and justify their answers in pairs. Alternatively, pairing weak/weak, average/average, strong/strong ensures that all learners get the chance to work at their own level and be challenged by others of the same level – this is particularly important to avoid frustration in stronger learners. Controlled pairing is also relevant to multilingual groups. 

- Personality Differences

• By varying elicitation techniques:  Care has to be taken in full class stages not to increase the anxiety of shy/insecure (or weaker) learners but also not to let confident (or strong) learners dominate. This may involve eg deciding between whether to nominate learners – and if so whether before or after an elicitation – or leaving the question “open”. Prior nomination warns the learners that a question is coming so that they are prepared to answer and is useful with more insecure learners. Post-elicitation nomination provides a greater challenge for more confident learners. Open nomination can lead to strong learners dominating, but sometimes leads to greater participation from others. Eg I have one learner who, if nominated to answer a question, however “easy”, immediately panics. But if an “easy” question is left open, she will often volunteer an answer. 

- Learners with Special Needs

• T. control of seating arrangements are crucial if the class includes visually impaired learners or fully or partially deaf learners to ensure that the class is fully inclusive  For example, visually impaired learners need to be seated close to the board and the T. needs to ensure that anything written on the board is large enough to be visible to them. Visual impairment may include colour blindness – many men are red/green colour blind and these colours need to be avoided when using the board or marking/commenting on written work.  if a class includes a deaf learner who lip reads, a horseshoe or circular seating arrangement needs to be used so that they can always see the lips of anyone who is speaking at that moment.

 

References

• News in Levels
• Hadfield, J. Classroom Dynamics, Oxford

Related articles in the Notebook

• Teaching Mixed Ability Groups : A Solution
• What ESOL Can Teach Us : Some ideas on Differentiation (recorded presentation, approx 29 mins, with an example of a differentiated lesson)

Using Guided Discovery

A brief introduction to Guided Discovery was given in the article on concept checking included in the ELT Glossary. If you haven't read it or aren't fully sure what GD involves, click on the link to see that article before you go on. You'll also need to have a clear understanding of the differences between deductive and inductive approaches to teaching language items - again, if you're not sure what the terms mean, click on the links before you go on with this article.

This article looks at:

• the principles behind GD
• its advantages over deductive approaches
• its advantages over other T-led inductive techniques
• situations in which a GD approach might not be appropriate

a) What are the principles behind GD?

 

• It is a cognitive approach which assumes that learners (Ls) need to “notice” (Schmidt) the language– ie they need to pay conscious and cognitively "deep" attention to the form and meaning of the language items in order to acquire and retain it. The active involvement needed for GD means that the rules are more likely to be “noticed”.

• It is a constructivist approach (Piaget, Vygotsky et al) which assumes that Ls do not just passively take in information, but work on it to assimilate or accommodate it with previous knowledge. In the case of language learning, the examples and concept check questions which usually make up the GD materials push the learners into hypothesising rules of form and use based on what they already know plus the new information that is a logical interpretation of the examples.

• It is a problem solving approach which helps the development of higher order thinking skills (Bloom). This is particularly important in situations where the T must be an educator as well as “just” a language teacher – eg with YLs or learners with a low level of general education who need to develop effective learning strategies if they are to succeed on the course.

• It is a Humanistic technique in the sense that it helps develop autonomous learning skills. If learners develop the ability to analyse language in the classroom, and then check their hypotheses with reference materials (textbooks often refer Ls to a Grammar Summary at the end of the activity) they are more likely to be able to do it outside with other new items they come across.

 

b) What are the advantages of GD over deductive approaches?

• Guided Discovery encourages an active approach to learning – learners realise they have to participate and “do the work” themselves and that the teacher/coursebook can’t do everything for them by giving them the rules (as in a deductive presentation).

• Guided discovery gives Ls confidence that they can understand the language themselves and is thus motivating.  Deductive explanations leave the ls feeling they only have to “absorb” explanations they are given and that language learning is a matter of memorising rules.

• Deductive approaches appeal to a limited number of learning preferences – mainly theorist (Honey and Mumford) and intrapersonal (Gardner). Guided Discovery can cater for various learning preferences– theorist/analytic learners; logical-mathematical intelligence; intrapersonal intelligence (if done at least initially individually) or interpersonal intelligence (if Ls then compare answers or work collaboratively from the beginning); etc.

• If (as is usually done) Guided Discovery is done in PW or GW, it can help improve rapport within the class as Ls are working collaboratively, helping each other understand, and generally “getting to know each other” better,. Deductive explanations are, on the other hand, inevitably processed individually.  

 

c)  What are the advantages of GD over T-led inductive presentations.    

• T-led presentations, as in a “traditional” PPP approach, are done in T/full class mode with the T. asking the concept check questions. If these are left open, it is usually the stronger Ls who answer and the weaker Ls are either just being “told” the answer or, may still not understand. If the T nominates specific Ls this may “put them on the spot” causing negative affect. In either case, only a limited number of Ls are fully involved and engaged. GD activities, being materials based, mean that all Ls must work on them to decide the answers.

• The learners are fully engaged (whether working individually or collaboratively) in Guided Discovery rather than just listening to the teacher (with the possibility of attention lapsing).  Especially if working collaboratively, the  pace of the lesson is higher preventing boredom, drifting attention etc.

• Guided discovery activities prepared by the T allow the T to facilitate learning as necessary for individual learners and differentiate the amount of help given in the materials rather than having to gear the presentation to the class as a whole. Stronger learners may need no help other than that provided by the concept questions in the activity. Weaker learners may need the materials to point them towards relevant features in the examples.

d) with what learner types and in what learning contexts might a GD approach not be appropriate? 

• With young primary age learners who not analytic and are still developing lower order thinking skills, and who are still able to acquire the language through simple exposure rather than needing to learn it formally.

• With some learners from educational cultures where a deductive approach to learning is normal, and the Ls expect the T. to  “tell” them the information they need – eg traditional learning contexts in Vietnam (though the government is currently trying to introduce more constructivist approaches to education). At the beginning of a long course, it might be best not to break ls expectations in a way that might be detrimental to their faith in the T’s competence. Once this had been established, more inductive methods could be gradually introduced, possibly starting with T-led concept checking before moving on to a "full" GD approach. 

•  With learners with a low educational level (eg some migrant ESOL learners) who do not have the higher order thinking skills necessay for GD. There is a strong argument for gradually developing these over time (as in the point above) but this would take considerable time, which might not be available on shorter courses.

Acknowledgement

Photo by brookesb via flickr

 

Inferring unknown words from context (Part One)

It is very unlikely that any of our learners will ever know all the words they need. English has an enormous number of words - on the Oxford University Press website they estimate it at a quarter of a million words. Even advanced learners, who may have more than sufficient productive vocabulary for their needs are unlikely to be able to read something like a newspaper feature article without finding a word that stymies them (and if you’re a non-native speaker who I’ve just stymied with the word stymy – it means block or confuse). And even native speakers are going to come across a vast number of words that they don’t fully understand – if you doubt this, take a look at Oxford’s Word of the Day. As I write, the word is chrominance. It’s a technical term, but don’t ask me the meaning because I didn’t even understand the explanation. From chrom I can deduce that it’s something to do with colour, but that’s as far as I got.

On the other hand, when we meet new words in context, the contextual clues often allow us to understand what the word means. What’s the word which I’ve represented by XXXX in the next sentence? We had forgotten to close the XXXX of the field, and the cows got out. No prizes for coming up with gate. Learners, however, frequently block when they meet a word like this which they don’t know. They reach for a dictionary, panic and lose the thread of what they were reading about.

As you’ve been reading this, you may have thought Yes, but I always ask my learners to guess unknown words. But notice that I’ve not used the word “guess” at all. You can’t guess the meaning of a word, you can only infer, or deduce, it. And to enable you to infer the meaning of the word, there have to be clear clues in the context. A lot of lessons go horribly wrong because the teacher asks students to “guess” the meanings of words without checking whether or not they are inferable. It’s easy enough to do. Take the word out and replace it with XXXX. Reading the sentence or paragraph now, is it clear what the missing word is, or are there various possibilities? What are the clues which point you towards the meaning?

Let’s take an example. I doubt whether many of you have ever come across the word bonxie, so that puts you in the same position as the learner if I use it. Now if you read it in this sentence - There were a lot of bonxies around this year - you are not much the wiser. You can work out that it’s a noun from the sentence and word structure, but there are no clues whatsoever as to the meaning. If this is all the information that the text contains, then there’s no way you can “guess”.

Here are some examples of extracts from authentic texts where I suggest it’s impossible to infer the meaning.
a)But as Professor Weeks points out, those characteristics are dangerously elastic: an "adventurous" company that fails suddenly becomes a "XXXXXX" company; a "bureaucratic" company that succeeds is seen as "disciplined".

b) The British talent for self-deprecation is well known; disciplined Japanese companies and XXXXXXXXX Americans may not appreciate the subtleties of the issue, he says.

c) To people who have just joined Nutzwerk, the friendly atmosphere is XXXXXXX.

If you want to check that there's really no extra informatiopn in the text that helps comprehension, you'll find extracts a and b here, and extract c here.
You can probably work out from the sentence structure that they are all adjectives – and that in the first example that it’s probably disparaging, but I suspect that’s as far as you can get. Of course, you can easily fill in the gap with a word that fits – for example in the last extract stimulating would be fine. But that doesn’t mean that that’s the correct meaning. It could just as easily be disconcerting, which changes the meaning completely.

So when you’re analysing a text prior to using it in the classroom, that’s your first question : of the words which the students are unlikely to know, which are and which aren’t inferable? Once you’ve decided which aren’t, you then have to decide what to do with them.

Your answer will probably depend on another question: how important is the word for an overall understanding of the writer’s meaning? In example b for example it probably isn’t. You can understand the writer’s point without knowing exactly what he thinks of Americans. But in example c it’s much more important. Because both derogatory and positive adjectives would fit, it’s not possible to understand what the writer is trying to say without understanding the word.

This type of word – unknown, uninferable but important to the text needs to be dealt with in a different way, which we’ll look at in the continuation of this post tomorrow - and I’ll also tell you what bonxies really are :)

Click here for Part Two of this article .

Inferring unknown words from context (Part Two)

If you've not yet read Part One of this article, click on the link



To summarise where we’ve got to so far :

• inferring words from context is a skill which is necessary for our learners if they are to deal effectively with the vast amount of unknown vocabulary which they will encounter


• not every unknown word in the text will be inferable


• not every unknown, uninferable word will be important to the overall meaning of the text

Firstly, the words which can't be inferred but are important. In this case you may decide to pre-teach them. One way of doing this is to include each word in a sentence where it is inferable, and to ask the students to work out the meaning. To take the problem word from extract c in the last post: He had to spend several weeks in quarantine because the disease was XXXXX (Obviously, for learners the actual word would be included.)

I doubt if you had much difficulty this time deciding the word was catching or infectious or contagious. But I also doubt that any of you thought of this meaning when you first read extract c. This time the clues were in the sentence, in the original they weren’t.

By using this technique, you’re actually killing two birds with one stone : firstly, you’re ensuring that the students will understand the words when they meet them in the text, and secondly you’re developing the skill of inferring from context. So that when students meet the other words in the text which are inferable, they’ll be better equipped to deal with them. If they have difficulty with your sentences it’s a good sign that the skill is not yet developed and they need help – which you can give by asking pointer questions such as Why do people have to stay in quarantine? What type of disease requires quarantine?
Notice here another point about inferring – to be able to do so, you need to understand the words which contain the clues. Here, for instance quarantine. If the text has a high proportion of unknown words, learners will have great difficulty inferring anything – they just don’t have enough clues to go on.

But even when a word is inferable, it is often only general rather than precise meaning which is accessible and students sometimes balk at the idea of not having 100% comprehension. Having only a vague idea of the meaning of words is something we take for granted in our own language, but which is often difficult for learners to accept. One way of showing them this is pointing out that even when they look it up in a bilingual dictionary, they often have no more idea of the meaning than when they inferred the meaning from the contextual clues. Let’s go back to our bonxie example. This time, I’ll give you a bit more information.

There were a lot of bonxies around this year. A pair attacked us as we were walking down to the beach ….
OK – so what can attack you? Must be something animate –animals? A pair of thuggish teenagers??

We must have got too near their nests ..
Aha - nests! Must be animals, probably birds.

They just dived out of the sky at us … They were huge, with great big beaks, and really frightening.
Yes, definitely birds. Large birds.

They spend most of the year at sea, but come to the island in summer to breed.
Oh – some sort of large seabird.
You’ve now got to the general meaning of the word bonxie – it’s the name of a large seabird. But, unless bird-watching is your hobby, you probably still don’t know exactly what type of bird. In fact bonxie is not standard English but a dialect word from the Shetland Isles. So let’s imagine that you have a bi-lingual Shetland Dialect-Standard English dictionary and you look it up. What do you find? Skua. (If you’re a non-native speaker teacher you might like to look it up in your own dictionary at this point.)

Now, presuming that you’re not an avid bird-watcher, how much more do you really understand than you did before, now that you know the word in your own language? Probably nothing at all. And if you came across the word skua while you were reading, as long as you understood that it was a large, aggressive, seabird, you would be unlikely to drop the article and rush to the library for a book on birds. You might decide to check later, but general comprehension would be adequate for reading the article.

Our knowledge of the language is full of words like this. Here are some of mine: I know that an apse is an architectural feature of a church, but I’m not sure what; I know that a spinney is a group of trees and so is a copse, but I’m not sure what the difference is; I think that a halberd is some sort of medieval weapon (though it might be a piece of clothing???), but I’m not sure what it looks like; and as I was writing the words infectious and contagious for the first part of this article, I realised that I wasn’t sure if they were really synonyms or not. I suspect there may be a difference (transmission via air or by contact ???). But I’m not sure, and unless I find myself teaching a group of doctors or nurses, probably won’t bother to check.

Many students reject this type of general comprehension when reading in English and don’t believe they’ve understood a word unless they’ve seen the exact translation. Give them words like skua in context and ask them to infer the general meaning. For example :

a. There are a lot of skuas nesting near the beach this year.
b. My last horse was grey, but this one is roan.
c. There was a lot of sedge growing on the bank of the river.
d. The church is famous for its apse.

Then let them check in their bilingual dictionaries and realise that they probably wouldn’t have known any more than they could infer even if they’d had the translation from the beginning. Once they recognise that they don’t have 100% comprehension even in their own language, they’re liable to feel happier about living with the uncertainty which is an inevitable part of using a foreign language.

An ELT Glossary: Task Repetition

Since the 1990s, the benefits of task repetition have been fairly widely discussed. However, they are generally limited to the discussion of the repetition of "tasks"in the technical sense of the term - a communicative activity which involves learners in exchanging information in order to achieve a specific objective. Willis, (1996:36), for example,  defines a task as “a goal-oriented communicative activity with a specific outcome, where the emphasis is on exchanging meaning not producing specific language forms." 

Several of the articles in the Notebook, though not necessarily following the other principles of task-based learning that Willis advocates, discuss the value of communicative task repetition in improving fluency. See for example here, here and here. All of these articles describe an approach using the following steps : Silent planning - Language Input - Task Enactment - Follow up (feedback and further language input) - Task Repetition - Feedback  - and possibly further repetition. 

This differs from some other writers' use of task repetition in that the task is repeated, sometimes more than once, in rapid succession within the same lesson rather than in later lessons. The communicative orientation of the task means that it can be enacted each time with different partners, which helps to prevent boredom - a new partner means new input. In the anecdote telling sequence described in the articles cited above, for instance, although learners are repeating their own anecdote, the new partner means they are listening to a different one. The challenge of incorporating the language they received in the Feedback/Language Input stages also means that they are aware of improving their own anecdote on each telling, while very strong learners, who might not need as much chance to "polish" their performance as others, can be kept involved by being given the extra challenge of telling one of the anecdotes they have heard (and thus needing to retrieve and use different language), rather than their own.

What most writers don't discuss is whether there is any value in repeating other activities - not necessarily tasks, but including "ordinary" exercises such as gap-fills, matching activities, word ordering activities, dialogue practice etc - and if so, when this should be done and again how boredom can be avoided. The only writer I know who touches on this is Thornbury (2010), who uses "task" in a much wider sense than the Willis definition above, to include any activity that occurs in the classroom.

Like Thornbury, I would support the repetition of all types of activity.  Rather than repeating these activities in the same lesson, however, I would argue that they can most usefully be recycled in the next, or even later lessons.

Why? The first reason is the importance of review. Many studies, eg Keely (1997) have shown the importance of review in ensuring retention of material. And yet, in my experience, few EFL teachers start the lesson with any sort of review of what was covered last time.  The repetition of an activity from the previous lesson or an earlier one can provide that opportunity. The possibility of boredom is lessened by the gap in time between the lessons, and there's the chance of motivation being increased if they see that they did the activity better the second time around. 

Another advantage is that it solves the problem of late arrivals. If you have a class where learners frequently "dribble in" over the first fifteen minutes or so, review activities mean that a) the activity is already familiar, so they can get started on them as soon as they arrive without needing any orientation , and b) by the time you start the "new" part of the lesson, where you don't want latecomers coming in and not knowing what's going on, everyone has arrived and has settled in.

Consistently starting the lesson with this sort of review could also have the advantage that it motivates some learners to review the previous lesson before they come to the new one - so that they are ready for whatever is repeated. But, particularly for stronger learners, doing it regularly could also result in boredom.  Thornbury (op.cit) suggests that the level of challenge can be increased the second time around. You can read his ideas on this for yourself (see the link below), but here are a few of mine.

1. A change in partners to create an increase in challenge can be achieved by manipulating who works together. Let's say that the earlier lesson was on connective expressions and the activity is a gapfill - learners have a text and  insert connective expressions given in jumbled order in a box above into gaps in the text. The activity develops their ability to recognise the logical connection between ideas in the text, and to choose an appropriate connective to indicate this. In the first lesson you may have partnered the learners weak with strong, so that the stronger learners could help the weaker learners. For the repeat, partner them weak/weak, strong/strong so that they are all working at their own level and the weaker ones now have to "do it for themselves".

2. For the stronger learners (or the whole class if they are homogeneous in level), make the activity more difficult. For example :

a) If you're using the connectives activity above, take the box away. The learners  now have to work entirely from their retention of the connective expressions learnt previously.  

b) If they were working on a text, give them the text again (or an extract if it was particularly long, with a mistake in each sentence. So if the text was a dialogue focusing on making suggestions, and the original sentence was Why don't we go out for a walk? the new version might read Why we don't go out for a walk? 

3. Change the format of the activity. Some examples : 

a) the original activity may have been an activity where they had a list of suggestions (or any other utterance type) and a jumbled list of the replies to those suggestions, and had to match them. In the follow up lesson, give each learner one of the suggestions or replies on a slip of paper, and do the activity as a "find your partner" mingle activity. 

b) if they were previously doing reading comprehension work on a written text, stick a paragraph on the wall and do it as a "running dictation". 

By varying the activities in these ways, material can constantly be recycled without the risk of the lessons becoming boring.



References and Other Related Reading

• Hawkes, M.L. (2009) Effects of Task Repetition on Learner Motivation, JALT Publications
• Keely, M. (1997) Memory and the Importance of Review  Bucks County Community College
• Thornbury, S.  (2010) R is for Repetition
• Willis, J. (1996), A Framework for Task-based Learning, London: Longman

Reading Aloud

In the last forty to fifty years, reading aloud has fallen out of general favour as a way of improving language proficiency. Arguments against it centre around the fact that it is a skill in its own right, not particularly useful for the average person, and one that even native speakers tend to do badly without specific training. And it is inadequate as a way of practising what students really have to do with the language for a number of reasons :

• It doesn’t practise speaking because there is no need to formulate what is being said.
• Frequently the task of processing meaning and speaking aloud at the same time is too much for the learner, with the consequence that processing meaning gets dropped. Thus, it doesn’t improve reading skills, and neither is it useful for language reinforcement, as the learner is reading without understanding. The depth of cognitive processing is very shallow.
• This lack of understanding is often evident in the mistakes made in word grouping and intonation – so the exercise is not useful as pronunciation practice either. Other activities, such as repetition practice (1), are more useful.

However, this analysis fails to take into consideration two things

a)  some students, albeit a minority, need to be able to read aloud effectively in English – for example rail, airport and airline staff, politicians or non-native speaker teachers of English. Two one-to-one students that I have taught in the past were :

• a grandmother, whose daughter had married an American, lived in the US and was about to have a baby - who would be brought up speaking English. My client, at A1 level, wanted to be able to play with her grandchild - and that included reading him/her stories. We therefore worked on the type of books for young children which she might use like Where's Spot? and others like it

• a politician at A2 level who needed to give speeches both when welcoming foreign delegations, and when attending EU meetings. The speeches were written for her in English by her assistants, but she needed to understand them and be able to read them aloud.

Similarly, various groups of non-native speaker EFL/CLIL teachers following language development courses needed to :

• read through instructions, activities etc in the textbooks they used in order to check comprehension
• read stories to their students - this was particularly important for the primary level teachers

b) reading aloud doesn’t necessarily mean asking students to open their books and read round the class.

How then can reading aloud be used effectively in the classroom?

• Where possible, keep the purpose of reading aloud authentic by using texts such as speeches, announcements, children’s stories etc that the students might need to read aloud.
• Keep the texts simple – at a lower level than the students’ silent reading competence – in order to avoid processing problems.
• Give the students the chance to analyse the text and decide how it should be read before asking them to read it aloud. Build a systematic focus on phonological features into the reading aloud sessions, focusing in turn on word grouping, weak forms, linking etc.
• Keep the texts short, focusing on quality rather than quality.
• For each feature start with a recognition activity and move gradually towards production. For example, for word grouping :
  
  a. Ask the students to read the text silently and check comprehension.
  
  b. The students listen to the teacher reading the first half of the text (or to a taped version of the text) and mark the points in the text where there's a pause. They then analyse why the pauses came at those points and whether other points would be possible.
  
  c. The teacher reads the text, a phrase at a time, and the students repeat, chorally and individually. They then “shadow read” (2) the text. This means reading the text at the same time as the teacher or tape, keeping the same rhythm, intonation and speed.
  
  d. The students now look at the second part of the text and predict the pauses. They then listen to the teacher (or tape) and check if they were right.
  
  In the next lesson, the students work on a new text and, after stage (a), individually mark the pauses they would make. In groups of three they then read the text aloud and compare the results – did they pause at the same points? Were the alternatives equally valid? They try to arrive at a definitive version, while the teacher circulates monitoring and helping. Once all the groups have an acceptable version and each member has had a chance to read it aloud, the text is then used to focus on another phonological feature(4), and stages b-d are repeated.

Notes

(1) I discussed the use of repetition practice in this article.

(2) Shadow reading is a technique first suggested by Marion Geddes and Gill Sturtridge. It’s something students can also practise at home using perhaps a graded reader and accompanying tape. They should first read a small section of text silently and at their own speed and make sure they understand it. They then listen to the tape following the text, once or more often if they wish. They then use it for repetition practice, one sentence at a time, and finally for shadow reading.

(3) Click here for another article on reading aloud, for the views of other teachers, and for a slightly different way of using shadow reading.

(4) The type of phonological features that they will need to master if they are to become proficient in reading aloud (features such as weak forms, elision, catenation etc) were discussed briefly in the article Why don't they understand?)

Photo provided under Creative Commons Licence by Steffe via flickr

Making the Most of Your Coursebook

The dialogues and texts used in EFL coursebooks are generally there to develop listening and reading skills. But they also contain a lot of language that the students could usefully “notice”, and this potential is often under-exploited. After the initial use of the text for comprehension, how can you recycle the texts and use them to develop the students general linguistic competence?

If you want to take a published text and adapt it in some way, you obviously face the issue of copyright. However, some publishers now accept that teachers need to adapt materials in order to make them fully appropriate for their students and their own teaching style, and waive copyright for certain portions of the book. An example is Oxford University Press which, on its website, publishes the tapescripts of some of its courses (Headway and International Express for example) in Word format, so that teachers can copy and adapt them. For the series Business Focus, there is also an extremely useful and flexible cloze maker, which can be used either for the texts in the book, or for the teacher’s own texts.

I like to bring texts back three or four times during the course, so that the language they contain is constantly recycled. They can be given to the students as a homework exercise, used as fillers at the start of the lesson while you’re waiting for latecomers, or at the end if your planned activities finish five minutes early. The types of activity you can use include :

• Scrambled texts. Give the students the paragraphs or sentences of the text in random order, and ask them to reconstitute the text. They may be cut up on separate strips of paper so that the students have to physically rearrange them on the desk (as ever, if you back them on card they’re more likely to be re-usable with a later class), or simply printed on a sheet of paper with a box next to each one where the students can write the appropriate number. If you use this activity you need to be sure that there are sufficient clues to make the activity possible. These will often be cohesive clues – linguistic connections between parts of the text, such as pronouns referring back to a previous noun How was your trip? / It was fine thanks or demonstratives and synonyms with the same reference function : At the moment there is the danger that the disease will reach pandemic proportions. This risk is made more serious by … And/Or there may be clues of coherence, logical relationships between parts of the text. The sequence How are you? / Fine, thanks. is coherent, whereas How are you? / At 10.15 is not. Be careful – these links do not always exist in a text and/or there may be more than one possible answer. When preparing the activity, check for this and if there’s a potential problem write the number of the problem sentence or paragraph next to it, so that students know where to put it in the text.
  
  
• Scrambled sentences. Alternatively, the sentences can be given in order, but the words of each sentence jumbled. This is a useful activity if your students have problems with word order in English.
  
  
• Gapped texts. There are various ways you can gap a text, from strict cloze technique (systematically taking out every fifth, seventh or ninth etc word) to more focused gapping – for example, removing all the prepositions or simply choosing the words which you feel it would be useful for the students to focus on. Obviously, this should not be a memory test : it must be possible to deduce the necessary word from the surrounding context, as in Can you pick ….. that piece of paper please? where the only possibility is up. Where there is more than one possibility, or simply to make the activity easier, the correct words can be given in jumbled order in a box at the top of the exercise, or the first letter of the word can be given: Can you g…………. me a hand with these boxes? The OUP cloze maker allows you all these options.
  
  
• Use the correct form. This is also a variant of a gapped text. It’s most commonly used with verbs – the verb is taken out of the sentence and the infinitive given in brackets (or, this time to make it harder, in scrambled order before the exercise) : I …… (go) to Spain last August. It can also be used, however, for other word classes – for example for comparatives and superlatives Barcelona is the ………………… (beautiful) city I know. or to focus on prefixes and suffixes He was fired because his work was ………… (satisfaction)


• Spot the Mistake. Again there are several variations of this activity. You can :
  · Insert a certain number of mistakes into the text, for example : Did you have a good travel? As before, the mistakes can be focused (verb forms, prepositions, spelling etc) or mixed, focusing on the words you want the students to notice. It helps if you tell the students how many mistakes they have to find – one per line, or eight in the whole text, for instance.
  · Give alternative words : Did you have a good trip/travel? / Barcelona is the most/more beautiful city I know. The students have to choose the correct alternative.
  · Add an extra word into each line of the text : I went to Spain the last August or, alternatively, omit one word from each line : I have to go to office. Again, the words you choose to add or omit will reflect the problems which you know your students have, and which you want them to focus on. This type of personalisation is the reason why this type of exercise can best be designed by the teacher rather than the coursebook writer.
  


• Rewrite the text. The students are given a version of the text almost but not quite like the original and have to rewrite it. For example, at beginner’s level they might have a version using full forms of the verb BE. They have to rewrite it putting the contractions back in wherever possible.

All of these activities have the advantage that the students can self-correct by looking back at the original text, which as I argued in Correcting Written Work : Encouraging "Noticing" often pushes them into a deeper form of cognitive processing than just having their work corrected. However, there are other variations which need a teacher’s confirmation. For example, if two three possibilities were given in Spot the Mistake, two of which were correct and one wrong : Did you have a good trip/travel/journey? The students would be able to find one of the correct alternatives in the original dialogue, but would need help for the second. The same would happen if there were more than one possible answer in a gapped passage : Can you ……… me a hand with these boxes? The original text might use give, but lend would be equally possible. Or if students at higher levels were given an informal version of a business letter they had already studied and had to convert it back to formal style. There might well be more than one acceptable alternative for each phrase.

But won’t the students get bored with working on the same text all the time? Not if the activities are varied, increase in level of difficulty each time, and the recycling is mixed in with other, newer work. In fact, very often they may not even remember having seen the text before. This is a sign that their processing of the text has not gone very deep – however often you’ve recycled it. One way to increase the “depth” of this processing is to ask them to create the exercise to be used with the text themselves. Once students are familiar with the exercise types that can be used, distribute a different previously studied text to each person. List a number of exercise types on the board, check that the students remember them, and ask them to choose one to apply to their text. For homework, they create the exercise and in the next lesson swap exercises and do the activity which another student has created.

Acknowledgement

Photo provided under Creative Commons Licence by Red Lioness via flickr

Teacher Talking Time : Part Two

In the first part of this article I looked at the reasons why teacher talking time (TTT) can be counterproductive if used to excess and unthinkingly. But there’s another side to the coin : used intelligently TTT can also be a useful aid to learning. How?

Firstly, several of the things we mentioned previously as being positive aids to learning, involve TTT. Elicitation, for example, which can be used effectively to lead students to make their own discoveries about the language.

TTT may also be the most efficient way, in terms of time, to get a point across. Instructions and set-ups for activities are an obvious example, but also language explanations. If a new word comes up during an activity, it may be quicker for the teacher to explain than for students to use their dictionaries.

Students, especially at the beginning of a course, may expect lessons to be entirely teacher-led. The teacher then has to decide the best approach : to throw them in at the deep end of a student-centred classroom – which may create negative reactions – or to ease them in gently?

If the students are learning outside an English-speaking country, the teacher is the probably their best source of what Stephen Krashen (1) has called “roughly tuned input”. The idea behind “roughly-tuned input” is that language is acquired by exposure to discourse which is comprehensible to the learner but one step above his/her current productive competence – it contains elements which can be understood from the context but which the learner cannot yet produce accurately. It is by encountering and processing this new language in a context which ensures that it is comprehensible that the item will be assimilated.

The teacher may be the only person who can provide this type of “caretaker speech” for the students. Even if the students are in contact with other native speakers, “ordinary” English-speakers often have great difficulty speaking to non-native speakers in a simple, yet natural way. An example I noticed recently was of a native speaker talking to an Italian elementary level learner. In an attempt to speak “simply” the native-speaker conscientiously knocked out of her speech all the Latin based verbs in favour of phrasal verbs. At one point, for instance, she had clearly intended to say arrive but hesitated, thought about it, and replaced it with turn up.

The concept of the “silent period” – the idea that learners need a certain amount of receptive exposure to the language before they are ready to produce it – also stems from Krashen’s work. One methodology which uses this idea is TPR, which I discussed briefly in the article Receptive Practice Activities. TPR activities are perhaps a good example of the conscious use of TTT to provide the learner with both a silent period and comprehensible input.

Whether or not you wish to take Krashen’s ideas fully on board, teacher talk can be an excellent source of listening comprehension practice. I argued in Part One of the article that too much TTT, or TTT of the wrong type, can be counter-productive for the development of the speaking skill. On the other hand, used intentionally, it can be a very useful aid to developing listening ability.

The development of the listening skill is usually thought of as involving listening to taped texts, whether on audio-tape, CD, DVD or video. This type of listening is obviously necessary. It is often the easiest way that students can be exposed to different voices and accents, interaction between native speakers, and fully authentic speech. But recordings also have a number of disadvantages. Firstly, it is ironic that the main medium we have for presenting interaction is the very one which precludes the student from interacting – a recording won't reply if you interrupt it. In real life, we rarely sit and listen to other people’s conversations. We participate - if we don’t understand we ask for repetition or clarification, if we get bored we change the subject, and so on. Even when watching TV, if something isn’t clear we will frequently turn to another person in the room and ask, and if the programme isn’t interesting we’ll simply turn off.

Secondly, acoustic problems, and poor equipment quality or recording quality may make listening to the recording more difficult than the real life experience. Unless video/DVD is used, the difficulty is heightened by the lack of visual clues – the listener can’t see where the conversation is taking place, what the speakers are looking at, their facial expressions and gestures, and so on. All of these, in the real situation, will aid comprehension.

Another factor adding to the level difficulty of the taped text may be that the conversation is distanced from the personal concerns of the students. They don’t know (or care) about the speakers, and very often have no real interest in the things they are talking about.

These factors won’t all be problematic all the time of course. But the additional challenge they create, and their potential for demotivating the student, needs to be taken into consideration.

Teacher-talk listenings (TTLs) can get round a lot of these problems. Examples of activities which can be used include story and anecdote telling, dictations, interactive activities, and games like Describe and Identify, Describe and Draw, and Describe and Arrange, all of which I will talk about in more detail in the next and final part of the article.

Notes

1. For a more detailed though critical account of Krashen’s work, see this article by Peter Cullip.

Photo provided under Creative Commons Licence by Susan NYC via flickr

Teacher Talking Time : Part One

At one time teacher talking time (TTT) was seen as being inevitably counterproductive and something to be limited as much as possible. Why? There are five main arguments against it :

• A large amount of TTT necessarily limits the amount of STT (student talking time). For example, in a 60 minute class, if the teacher is talking for a total of 45 minutes, that leaves only fifteen minutes left for the students. If there are ten in the class, they’ll get only 90 seconds each to speak. Many activities, however, do not need to be teacher led – pair work (PW) or group work (PW) can be used instead. A practice activity might be set up in T/class mode, demonstrated in open pairs (students doing the activity in front of the class), and done in closed pairs (all the students working at the same time).
• A large amount of TTT inevitably means long stretches of time in T/class mode. This is uninvolving for students and is likely to lead to a drop in concentration and in pace. The lesson becomes boring and students “switch off”. To prevent this, activities and interaction patterns (T/class,PW,GW, IW) need to be be varied. How much class time can usefully be spent in T/class mode will depend on factors such as the students, the time of day, and what is being taught, but a useful rule of thumb guide is to set an absolute maximum of 30% of any one lesson, and no more than 10 minutes at a stretch.
• TTT often means that the teacher is “telling” the students things that they could be working out for themselves - for instance grammar explanations and corrections. Apart from the fact that concentration may well wander half way through the explanation, monologue gives the teacher no real clue as to whether the students have understood. This can be avoided by using elicitation rather than explanation – the teacher asks pointer questions rather than simply telling, allowing the students to formulate the rules for themselves. If students are presented with clear examples and guiding questions, they often do not need to be “told”. Discovering grammar in this way is liable to mean deeper understanding and ultimately more successful learning. Organising the activity as pair work rather than T/class work also means that all the students have the chance to work on the new language, and not just the quicker ones who get the answer immediately and “tell” the others.
• The work done by researchers such as Coulthard and Brazil on discourse analysis made it clear that T/S discourse is always distorted by the role imbalance of teacher and student – the teacher is expected to take the lead in initiating the topic, allocating turns, evaluating comments etc, while the student merely responds. A typical piece of classroom discourse might go something like : T : Right. (indication of change of topic) Can you turn to page 99 and look at the picture (instructs) What sport is that? (initiates discourse topic) Paola? (allocates speaking turn) S : Tennis (responds) T : Yes, tennis. Good. (evaluates) If students are constantly kept in T/class mode or if the teacher participates in PW or GW, there is a very high probability that the discourse will follow this sort of pattern. But this, as researchers such as Crystal and Davy, and Brown and Yule have shown is very different from the structure of normal conversation, where participants have equal rights and need to be able to carry out all the different moves in the discourse. PW and GW without teacher intervention is therefore essential for developing the speaking skill.
• If the teacher is constantly dominant and controlling, student autonomy is minimised. Students take no responsibility for their own learning but learn what the teacher decides and when. Several methodologies of the last twenty five years or so (for example, CLL and Dogme, which I will discuss in more detail in future articles) have questioned whether this sort of “imposed syllabus” can produce results and have attempted to turn the situation on its head, giving learners full responsibility for the language produced and analysed in the classroom.

Is TTT always counterproductive however? In the second part of this article we’ll look at when it can be useful, and ways it can be used productively in the class.

Notes

1. For a more detailed analysis of classroom discourse, with references for the work of the researchers I have mentioned and many others, see this article by Moritoshi.