Exam strategies: happy student, happy teacher

I was preparing a student for his CAE (C1 Advanced) in a fortnight.

In Reading (Part 7), candidates are given an article and have to complete gapped paragraphs.

This particular student was struggling a bit in the last lesson, so I came up with two different strategies which he subsequently applied to his homework. EUREKA! When we checked homework earlier today, he got all answers correct. What's more - he had done it under exam conditions!

I'd like to share my two strategies here:

• developing an overall structure of the text - thinking about the main idea of each paragraph (with the aid of topic sentences)
  
  N.B. There's a logical progression of such 'main ideas' in the text, so that candidates can deduce what goes in each gap.
  
  
• lexical references - using them to verify answers, focusing on the cohesion between the previous and the subsequent paragraphs
  

30-hour week (contact/classroom hours) ... Part 2

Some ideas adpated for online lessons which have worked well in my teaching context:

Get to know you (teacher)

• face-to-face (credits to Sonya): I would cut up 5 photos about me, set it as a puzzle, and let my student(s) come up with questions to ask me. For an added challenge, I would split my class into teams and give 1 point to those who asked me a question with a 'yes' answer.
  
   
• online (individual, pairs or trios): I show my students the same set of photos, but I've pixelated them so that everything looks blurry. My student(s) have to guess what the pixelated photos show. Then I progressively reveal the original photos. Finally, I let my student(s) come up with questions to ask me.
  
  
  
• online (larger groups): I show my students 5 (unpixelated) photos, put them in various breakout rooms, and let them come up with questions to ask me. In open class, I ask my students to type their questions in the chat box. Then I reformulate my students' questions where necessary and answer them one by one.
  
  
• online (larger groups): I set up a shared Word document on Google or OneDrive. In this document, I provide a short model paragraph introducing myself; there is designated space for each student to write their own introductions. In the lesson, I paste the link to the shared document in the chat box. My students can read each other's introduction and comment on it.
  

Get to know you (student)

• face-to-face: I would provide some ideas in bullet points for my students, e.g. name, current city, occupation, hobbies and interests, languages spoken, language learning history, motivation for learning English, etc. Then I would put them in pairs for 1 minute. After that, I would change the arrangement so that every student could talk to each other.
  
  
  
• online: I show my students the same ideas in bullet points. Then I put them in various breakout rooms. After a minute, I broadcast an announcement signalling the change of group arrangements. When I move my students to other rooms, I always do it in one of the breakout rooms so that my students know I'm moving some of them elsewhere and bringing others in their current room.
  

Information gap activities

• face-to-face: I would arrange my class into 'A's and 'B's and then give instructions while chesting the role/task cards. Before I hand out the role/task cards, I would check my students' understanding of instructions.
  
   
• online: I set up the breakout rooms first, so that I can arrange my class into 'A's and 'B's according to the breakout room list. Then I give instructions while showing a snapshot of the role/task cards. After that, I paste the link(s) to the role/task cards, which have been uploaded to a shared cloud storage, in the chat box. Before I put my students in various breakout rooms, I make sure everybody is on the same page (i.e. role/task cards fully downloaded) and check understanding of instructions. Finally, I open the breakout rooms.

Writing (50 to 100 words)

• face-to-face: every student would write on seperate pieces of paper. At the end of the Writing task, I would display my students' work around the classroom in a gallery reading activity.
  
  
  
• online: I use a Padlet board so that my students can post their written work. Students can read each other's work and give feedback on it. The Padlet board is automatically saved so that I can give further written feedback after the lesson.
  

 

30-hour week (contact/classroom hours) ... almost done!

(Part 1)

It's been a full-on week teaching online EFL/ESP lessons and one from which I've learnt more than any other.

As we're getting over the shock of the Great Online Shift, I think it would be a good time to shift our focus from how we teach online to how we learn online. Students need a new set of study skills: digital note-taking, organising computer documents, familiarity with software/platforms, etc.

I believe if teachers develop a greater understanding of the 'learner experience', it's going to help them to adapt face-to-face classroom techniques for teaching online lessons. Hence I shall sum up my principles of best practice in 2 'E's: efficiency and effectiveness.

IELTS class starting in 5 - Part 2 to come with practical classroom ideas.

...

"Imposter phenomena" by Teresa Bestwick

I've been doing a tiny bit of presenting recently - Teresa's mini-plenary session on imposter phenomena springs to mind. You can find her blog post here.

Personally, I'd be cautious of preaching something (methodology or tools alike) which I haven't tried out with my students. I do talk about teaching theories, but I use them in order to support my critical analysis of methodologies or classroom tools. Fortunately, nobody has said this to me yet: you haven’t actually tried this with your own students though, have you? However, I've already witnessed it happening to other people.

Unless the aim of our talk is to promote a methodology or tool, I think it's important to provide a critical view when presenting in webinars or at conference sessions. This doesn't mean we should be self-defeating, but adding something as simlpe as a qualifying statement would do the job (given that it's based on actual practice!). In the course of developing Second Language Acquisition theories, some methodologies have become fashionable only to be replaced by others. After all, no methodology is inherently good or bad, but rather it's about how effective or efficient they are for language learning, and this depends very much on one's teaching and/or learning context. There's one thing we can't deny though - language is a medium through which we communicate our ideas.

Now, I think we can easily spot an impostor 😁 by asking the 'silver bullet' question, but let's be kind and supportive to them.