Personalising YL classroom management

Personalisation is often discussed in the context of motivational theories. The received wisdom is that learners will perceive greater usefulness of lesson practice if they can use language relevant to their real-life needs.

The usual way

My default position, which is influenced by my British upbringing, is to refrain from imposing blanket classroom rules on my students. I have instead explored various ways of implementing classroom management:

• Teens - I usually ask my students to discuss what kind of classroom environment they would enjoy, so that they can learn effectively and achieve their end-of-year goals.
  

• YLs - I usually ask my students what is good and what is not so good for their classroom.

The result is more or less similar across all classes - my students almost always come up with generic rules, such as 'listen to the teacher' or 'be nice'.

Personalising rules

Every class has a different set of characters.

For quieter Young Learners or Teens groups, any explicit classroom management would be an unnecessary step for the teacher. In fact, I didn't have to use any when I taught a KEY for Schools class of five young teens last year.

For energetic and lively groups, I find it works more effectively when I respond to specific challenging situations by adding new rules. This is what I mean by personalising them.

• With a Teens PET for Schools class, we negotiated a deal of using more games in exchange for less disruptive chattering in the students' first language. Those students who earned themselves a bad name last year have become more willing to participate in lesson activities. Chattering is tolerated so long as it does not impede task achievement or make the whole class feel cliquey. (I also focus on the positives and ignore the petty negatives with a disapproving stare.)
  
  
• With YLs, rules have to be devised on the spot as we encounter any new challenging situation. Such new rules include 'going to the washroom once', 'leaving the classroom for water breaks once', and 'English only for five minutes' among others. 'One person speaks at a time' is also helpful - except in pair or group work. Those YLs who keep talking randomly are now better at understanding when they are supposed to listen.
  

Both the teacher and the students are happier now.

Tribute to Her late Majesty

Queen Elizabeth II was a great role model for our country. Her dedication to service, as well as stoicism in times of uncertainty, sustained modern Britain throughout the large part of the twentieth century, carrying the nation into the twenty-first. She witnessed the transition from Empire to Commonwealth, suffered losses of some of her closest family members, and saw the transformation of the United Kingdom from the analogue to the digital age.

I have come to this world as Her late Majesty's subject, in a hospital named after her, and in a land that was her realm. Thank you and rest in peace. God save the King.

(It was some time in 2012 when I was on a Virgin West Coast train from Manchester to London. As the train was travelling south of Milton Keynes, a Deutsche Bahn locomotive suddenly caught up with us. Then one of the passengers remarked loudly, 'that's the Royal Train!')

When first-language English speakers aren't understood abroad

It was a mild late August morning, a welcoming break from the heatwave earlier in the week which saw temperatures going up to 32 in Berlin. I decided to stop by the main railway station, Berlin Hbf, on my way to catch a flight from Brandenburg Airport. For those of you who aren't familiar with this station, it's essentially a shopping mall with perpendicular sets of platforms at both the lowest and the highest levels. There are plenty of eateries to choose from too, which is a stark contrast with monotonous train stations in Italy.

Now came the embarrassing part: instead of saying ich hätte gern Falafel Wrap und eine Tasse Tee (German: I'd like falafel wrap and a cup of tea), I ordered my lunch in English. The poor German-speaking lady at the till heard 'cuppa tea', which is the way people usually say it in the UK. Little did I know she actually got confused and made me a cappucino!

I double checked with her, but she responded in English: 'sorry, we don't have "cuppa tea" here.' I instantly regretted it - why didn't I just speak in German and, what's more, I should have said 'tea' or 'cup - of - tea'!

Communication is all about understanding what others say and getting yourself understood by others. Some of my students (and I suspect many more to-be learners out there) say they want to speak with a 'British' or 'American' accent. Firstly, which British accent would they really like to learn? There are some 50 different British-type accents on top of the non-geographical RP. Secondly, if students mostly use English in a lingua franca environment, and they rarely need to communicate with first-language speakers, what's the point of winding up your interlocutors with a traditional but incomprehensible accent? I'm not suggesting that teachers should deny language learners of the opportunity of adopting a traditional English accent, but the realistic goal should be intelligibility regardless of which accent students choose to be their model.

Teaching YLs: ideas for spoken and written practice

A huge thanks to Teachers E and S - I've been able to add a couple of practice activities by teaching their lesson plans! 

As the Summer Camp weeks go along, I should be able to add more to the following lists.

Spoken practice (YLs)

• capture the flag - with flashcards in two rows (each YL should stand next to a flashcard)
  
• Who am I - holding flashcards on one's forehead (without being able to see them)
  

Written practice, or practice with form (YLs)

• treasure hunt - given visuals (write the word) 

Other 'less extended' practice activities I've used:

Spoken practice (YLs)

• back to the board - Italian speakers call this game 'taboo'
• pictionary
• musical chairs
• run and tag
• whispers
• pass the flashcards round - and say the word aloud
• find the missing flashcards 
• run and tag
  
• Simon says
• chain story
  

Written practice, or spoken practice with form (YLs)

• pelmanism - I call it 'memory tiles' (if there are tiles containing the target vocabulary)
• word bingo
• board race
• battleship
• chain story
  

Pronunciation - Form or Form - Pronunciation? / Written - Spoken or Spoken - Written?

Reflections: MPF or MFP?

Why do CELTA tutors tell trainee teachers that they should follow MPF (meaning - pronunciation - form) in that order when clarifying language?

In terms of learning, does it matter whether the EFL teacher chooses an MPF procedure over MFP as in Guided Discovery tasks?

After teaching vocabulary to a group of YLs aged 8 and 9 this morning, I noticed some evident differences between the two clarification procedures.

I was teaching the word Poseidon, which is pronounced /pəsaɪdən/ in RP English. Despite drilling it several times and breaking it down into individual syllables, once my students saw the written form (i.e. spelling / orthography) of the word, some of them  came up with all sorts of pronunciations. I heard pole-say-dawn, pole-see-dawn or pole-side-dawn in the subsequent practice activities. No matter how many times I corrected certain students, there was still a tendency for some of them to creep back to their L1 habits.

What does this say about decoding and encoding a word? The MPF procedure ensures that language learners keep to the spoken form of a word until its pronunciation is more or less firmly lodged in their short-term memory. In an ideal world, it is at this point that they can move on to the written form of the word.

(There are exceptions to the MPF procedure for clarifying language, but this renders another blog post.)

Reflections: Written - Spoken or Spoken - Written?

What does this say about the order of language practice activities then?

In the context of teaching VYLs and YLs, the order is thus spoken practice before written practice. Note that this is different to what trainee teachers are taught on the CELTA, which is written (controlled) practice followed by spoken (controlled - freer) practice.

If we apply the Spoken - Written concept to staging practice activities, there should be plenty of spoken practice before the learners start writing a word or grammatical structures. More importantly, VYLs and YLs don't learn a language by reading and writing it; listening and speaking always happen first in real life.

(In a related blog post, I'm going to mention some extended practice activities in the context of teaching YLs.)

Teaching YLs: flexibility and effectiveness

When something doesn't go 'as planned' in a lesson, it becomes a creative learning moment for the teacher. This couldn't be closer to the truth when I said hello again to teaching YLs (under 11s) after a whole school year.

 Back-up activity format/arrangement

The original GTKY idea was having my students stand in two circles. Either the outer or inner circle was going to rotate left or right, so that the students could say hello to each other and repeat several sentences about basic personal information.

While it'd worked magically well with a CEFR A1/A2 group last year, there was confusion among this particular group of students at level A1. After another attempt, I had to come up with a different arrangement - asking my students to stand in two rows and move like a conveyor belt. It worked very well this time round.

What have I learnt from this?

The effectiveness of a YL lesson isn't necessarily measured against how closely an activity follows the plan, but how flexible a teacher can be when making decisions. I think there lies a delicate balance between when to insist on trying and when to use a back-up arrangement. In any case, the aim of my GTKY activity was achieved regardless. (So I knew what to do next time if things didn't work!)

Listen to the teacher

Some YLs (at levels A1/A2) can be talkative and although they're using a lot of L1 to socialise, I think it would be unrealistic to demand such students to use English for that purpose. There's often little point in either forcing the use of English or discouraging YLs from socialising with each other. It only becomes an issue when YL students keep talking during critical moments of a lesson, such as task setting or instructions.

Based on my observations, I'd like to outline three probable causes as to why this happens in a YL classroom:

1. YL students don't understand when exactly it's appropriate for them to stop talking and listen. This might not be a behavioural issue.
2. There's no reward system connected to student behaviour, which makes it harder for YLs to know when it's appropriate to stop talking.
3. There's a lack of clear attention-grabbing signal on the teacher's part, but even the classic 3-2-1 countdown cannot save a teacher's day if there's no reward system.

As you can see, points 1 to 3 are interconnected with each other.

Learning to learn languages

It usually takes most language learners weeks, if not months, to make changes about how they learn English. But the group of older teens who I've been working with this week has been a pleasant surprise.

We're on Day 3 of a language 'immersion' week. I still remember being slightly baffled by how some weaker students in this 'B1' group turned out to be more like A1/A2 in their listening/reading comprehension and spoken production. (Their initial production was merely short simple sentences.) There must be some kind of mental block, I think, and I was trying to figure it out as our first lesson went on. Halfway through the lesson, it became clear to me that most of them don't use English at all in their everyday life. Their exposure to this language outside the classroom is next to none, and a few were even too embarrassed to speak in English for fear of sounding ridiculous. I also noticed that all of them almost always used word-for-word translation, and I could easily see the students working things out aloud.

Towards the end of that lesson, we sat down and spent 5 minutes trying to understand why they found English challenging. I also provided my 'diagnosis': 1) blanket use of word-for-word translation; 2) false assumption of a 100% regular connection between sound and spelling (which I picked up on when monitoring a brainstorming/listing activity); 3) learning the meaning of new words out of context.

Fast forward to Day 3, it was rewarding to see one of them making the effort - taking notes conscientiously, asking questions, seeking help from his classmates, and applying his newly equipped study skills to language learning. After all, it was his change of attitude that mattered most to teaching and learning. It feels as though another person has been rescued from the abyss!

Student success: C1 and C2

Super congratulations to Sara C, who passed her C2 Proficiency exam with flying colours (Grade A), and Enrico DM, who passed his C1 Advanced.

Two pieces of splendid news on the same day!

Making the hangman game more student-centred

It came about from a spontaneous idea when I was teaching earlier this afternoon. It was with a group of Pre-Intermediate young teens - we were working on vocabulary on the topic of 'food' (ways of cooking, to be precise).

The students were doing a matching task with visuals. Based on what I've seen, most students usually struggle with 'oven', 'pan' and 'saucepan' (word and pronunciation), which were shown by the visuals on the coursebook page. So I decided to devise a hangman game on the spot. From my past observations, this game tends to be teacher-centred in that each student would be given a turn to say a letter while others would sit around and wait for their turn.

With that in mind, I was thinking of ways of making the hangman game more student-centred. Why couldn't my students have the answers and let their classmates guess the word?

• I drew an oven, a (frying) pan and a saucepan on the whiteboard.
• I wrote the answers on pieces of paper.
• I gave each student a piece of paper with the answer. (like an information-gap activity)
  
• I asked my students to copy what was on the whiteboard.
• I let my students play the hangman game in groups.

The result? Compared to the lockstep, teacher-fronted format, the level of student engagement was much higher. It generated some excitement among my students when they were down to the last chance. Poor hangman - two casualties and two close calls!

Dogme journey - where I am now

It happened long before the pandemic hit us. I was only 5 months into EFL teaching when Teacher P walked in the staff room and recommended the book Teaching Unplugged to me.

I then read it over the summer months - I'd started out properly as an EFL teacher in March 2019. Since then, I've incorporated some Dogme elements in my lessons. Dogme, an approach proposed by Scott Thornbury, is largely based on the socio-cultural theory of learning. One of Dogme's signature characteristics is 'relevance to the learners' through the use of learner-generated, not coursebook-imposed, contexts.

While I've never taught a proper lesson in the Dogme approach, I've frequently provided personalised contexts to my language practice activities. I call this 'Dogme Lite' - a kind of soft Dogme. I've also worked with some Business English learners who came to the lesson with their immediate needs and material, from which I would try to identify any (pattern) of emergent language or language which is crucial to giving them the tools to succeed. Having taught quite a few lessons like these, I think it's time to start thinking how I can deal with emergent language in a more systematic way.

Incidentally, I was teaching a Conversation class last Saturday. It was the first conversation class of the year, and the participants started with some 'catching up' (What are you up to? - that sort of stuff). At some point, the topic of soaring energy prices came up in their conversation. Instead of detecting the participants' emergent language, I think I jumped the gun by exploiting the topic for a role play. In this role play, the participants as government minister, representative of a consumer rights group, and CEO of an energy company had the objective of reaching a mutually satisfactory agreement from their differing positions. The activity took off and the discussion went for a good 15 minutes - feedback was duly given.

With hindsight, I think the Conversation lesson looked more like a strong-end Task Based Learning one. The original idea of Dogme is that once the emergent language has been identified, there will be some sort of focus work (cognitive theories come into play here) and practice activities devised on the spot. The Dogme journey continues ...