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 ...