Reflections on Synchronous and Asynchronous Learning

Teaching and learning have undergone a period of sweeping changes which was almost unthinkable in the last decade. As we are standing at the crossroads where learning can take place both synchronously and asynchronously, how can teachers best use lesson time to maximise language learning? In search of answers, I shall reflect on my personal observations and explore some implications for lesson planning and choice of activities.

This is a talk which I delivered at the 2021 annual conference of International House (IH) Milan and San Donato.

Exploiting reading texts for communication

I started off feeling slightly dissatisfied with some traditional reading tasks in the EFL classroom. (Don't get me wrong, I'm perfectly happy with most coursebook tasks!) But what I've started noticing is that not only do my students' reading speeds vary considerably, but most classroom reading tasks also represent mere exercise for their own sake or they are there on the page to present contextualised language. If used at their face value, most tasks would barely reflect our purposes of reading in real life. So, instead of coming up with an extra task for the fast finishers, I've started exploring other ways of using reading texts:

Scanning for information: jigsaw reading for collaborative exchange of information

I was teaching a demo lesson in July 2021 for my school's professional development course - IH Certificate in Teaching Young Learners and Teenagers (CYLT). On this occasion, there were 4 students who were young teens at Pre-Intermediate level.

The course tutor, Kate, gave me two Wikipedia dossiers of Harry Kane and Giorgio Chiellini. (Let's not mention that England lost to Italy on penalty!) The reading task required my students to scan for specific information about the footballers, such as their age and place of birth. While I was preparing this lesson, I thought it would be a good idea to make this task a bit more communicative. We often look up factual information on the Internet in order to relay it to others, don't we? So, I adapted the given dossiers for a jigsaw task, in which my students had to work in pairs and relay information about Harry or Giorgio to each other.

Role play: another route to achieving detailed comprehension(?)

I'm teaching a class of KEY Preparation (A2) this year. We had a lesson on Reading skills two weeks ago, and the coursebook task was based on a short text about a teenage sports coach recounting his experience. Instead of running it as a traditional 'detailed comprehension' task, I asked my students to read the text and think of three questions to ask the teenage coach. After that, one of them in each pair/group would assume the role of the teenage coach. My students interviewed each other and answered questions from their peers using the information from the text. I was glad to see this role play injected a bit of life into the classroom.

Gist: collaborative matching texts to their headings/titles

I tried this one with a pair of Upper-Intermediate (B2) adult learners last week. For this 'gist' reading task, I divided the text into two equal halves. The students had to summarise the texts to each other and work together to match their texts to the respective headings/titles. This collaborative task mirrors our acts of sharing what we've read with others while our conversation partners often capture the 'gist' of it.

An afterthought: are these adapted Reading skills tasks pointing to Widdecombe's idea of 'authenticising' an 'inauthentic' text? (Thinking ...)

New school year, new action points

Note to self:

• for a class of young teens preparing the KEY exam - keep policing my graded teacher talk (in terms of both language and speed of delivery)
  
  
• for the above class - experiment with modelling practice activities instead of giving 'longer' instructions
  
  
• for a class of older teens preparing the FCE exam - still the same coursebook as last year, but introduce even greater opportunities of communicative practice
  
  
• for the above class - adapt practice activities for groups of threes more frequently
   
• for company courses - encourage learners to bring material to the lesson more frequently
  
  
• for IELTS/CPE preparation (and other courses in general) - be selective of my feedback to avoid overwhelming learners with too much information

 

Experimenting with drama in EFL

The Friday Show has been a usual fixture at the summer camp. For this week, my group of students (9- to 11-year-olds) came up with a short sketch.

Since it was my first time using drama in the 'classroom', I decided to let things develop without a fixed plan.

 

Day 1, Monday

The students worked in two smaller groups. One group came up with the plot while the other group chose a song and transcribed its lyrics.

As most of them were at level A1/A2, they talked in L1 but produced written language in English.

Day 2, Tuesday

Having taken note of what the students came up on Day 1, I prepared a worksheet for the group by typing their original plot on Word.

For the day's main task, I had identified six 'scenes', for which short dialogues would need creating, in the plot. The students were therefore split into six pairs. Each pair had to write short dialogues for their designated scene.

Again, they discussed the finer ideas in L1 but produced written language in English. The weaker students needed support since they didn't have enough language for writing; word spelling was a key problem for them too.

Day 3, Wednesday

The students worked on the other items for the show.

(In the meantime, the script was more or less ready behind the scene - several mistakes in the student-generated dialogues were ironed out. I also added a small number of simple structures at level A1/A2 to it.)

Day 4, Thursday

The students rehearsed the sketch and improved on a few places in the script. Support on pronunciation was given to one or two weaker students.

Day 5, Friday

The students had a final rehearsal on their own.

About half of the group were already able to memorise their parts, which was an excellent sign in terms of learning and using the language. This was, however, not compulsory as they were told they could always rely on the script. Having said that, only one student read directly from her piece of paper due to pronunciation-related challenges.

The final result was satisfactory given we had a few hours to create a sketch. In terms of language learning, it would have been better if error correction had been elicited from the students.

With hindsight, I shouldn't have overlooked stage choreography in the rehearsals. Apology for being the perfectionist here. For maximum performance effects, the students should be encouraged to adopt clear diction and appropriate tones, speak with audible voice levels, and pay attention to their body gestures (i.e. avoid facing the audience with their side or back).

Teaching YLs: a more refined take on student-centredness

I was teaching animals (vocabulary) with can/can't (grammar) to a group of 9- to 11-year-olds.

It started off with the idea of engaging my students at the planning stage. (Yes, it's always been my nightmare to have a group of bored faces who would zone out during the lesson!) As I was delivering the in-person lesson, I noticed a  special vibe which I had never experienced in all other previous YL classes. It was akin to the concept of 'flow' by Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi in his book, Finding Flow (New York: Perseus, 1998) - wonderful to take a back seat and see the whole class of YLs working so calmly in pairs.

Looking back on the lesson, I've identified what particularly worked well:

Warm-up routine

I've been a language learner and there were occasions on which I wished I'd had the chance to get to know certain classmates. Hence I decided to use 'rings of circle' as both a GTKY activity in the first lesson and a warm-up routine.

The student-to-student rapport was overall excellent. We continued building on the familiar routine of standing in two rings of circle, so that everybody has the chance of talking to each other through rotation and turning towards each other.

Presentation of vocabulary

I realised that whenever I mimed along with flashcards, it was always me, the teacher, who imposed the actions on my students.

What I did this morning was that I elicited the mime of each animal from individual students. Then other students followed their classmates, which worked wonderfully.

(Thanks to my colleague, teacher S, for guiding me on drawing flashcards with a marker pen. Teacher development for next year: learn how to draw?) 

 

Practice of vocabulary and grammar: guess which animal

Team games worked well. For vocabulary, an individual student had to mime the animal while the teams compete against each other in writing the answer most quickly. (N.B. One benefit of not having gone for 'saying the answer aloud' is that it might be harder for the teacher to judge who have raised their hands most quickly.)

For grammar, a representative of each team was given the same animal. They went back to their teammates, who had to ask them 'Can you + verb?' (questions). The representative could only answer 'Yes, I can' or 'No, I can't', and their teammates needed to guess the animal as quickly as they could.

I ended up showing the answer once by accident - didn't hide it well in front of my students. They were honest enough to tell me, so each team earned a point!

 

Positive points system

The implication of catching YLs being good is that I've started giving points to the well-behaved opposite team when a student started misbehaving. (The key word is 'opposite'.)

I've also started using the points system more consistently when grabbing students' attention for giving instructions, asking students to tidy up/put things away, etc. 2 points are sometimes given to the 'good' team, whereas the 'bad' team still get 1 point if they are just a bit slower.