Graded readers in ELT: the benefits and ways of using them – an ELTchat summary

Having not taken part in an ELTchat for a while, nor even having been very active on Twitter recently, I was glad that one of James Taylor’s tweets on book clubs caught my eye and drew me in to the discussion on the benefits and use of graded readers. This post is a summary of the chat.

I’ve long been a fan of extensive reading for language development. Research, personal experience and feedback from learners continue to convince me that it’s a good thing to do. Graded readers make extensive reading accessible to more learners and the benefits of using them seemed clear to those taking part in the chat. Marisa has noticed great improvement overall when she has used a class reader over a number of lessons. Hana felt that reading helped to extend vocabulary in “the most natural way.” Other participants have found that students starting at a low level of reader can progress up through the levels to ungraded texts.

Getting everyone to read, however, is not easy and some people expressed reservations about ‘forcing’ reluctant learners to read. Rather than forcing people to read though, it was suggested that teachers work to encourage and motivate people by providing choice, support and enjoyable and useful classroom activities around reading and graded readers.

Many chat participants were enthusiastic about extensive reading and using graded readers and were keen to pass this on to learners. James tweeted, “ask my students if I think that reading is important… #neverstopsmentioningit”. There’s probably a fine line between encouraging and nagging (and it’s one I often cross… apparently!) but reluctant readers can come to find reading graded readers useful and enjoyable. People who may not have read much in their first language, find that the first book they finish is a graded reader. Vedrana told us how students tell her that “they haven’t read a book since university” but that those “who get into borrowing readers regularly are often thrilled to be reading again!”

The range of abilities and interests of our students means that it’s difficult to find a book that all students find interesting. Similarly, we may often only have one copy of each book. The more choice that we can offer, the more chance there will be something that students enjoy reading and as Marisa pointed out, reading for pleasure is a great habit to encourage, referring us to Stephen Krashen’s talk on language acquisition through compelling readings. Hana’s students were enjoying a new graded reader of ghost stories, while detective stories were popular with Vedrana’s. LeedsAcademy had found interactive fiction where you choose your own ending to be very popular with students. Learners can also be directed towards short stories, articles and as well as non-graded books and texts eventually.

Many chat participants had a selection of readers – a book box or a library shelf or two. Building a collection of books was discussed. Where funding is available, students can be involved in choosing which books to buy from a brochure or online publisher catalogue. An initial personal investment in a few books, and using them for good project work, helped to persuade LeedsAcademy’s DOS in Thailand to buy 40 titles! If there is no funding available, students could agree to buy one or two books each and swap them or students could pay a small fee each time to replenish stocks. Books are increasingly available free online, including graded readers, on library sites and sites such as Project Guttenberg. Some graded readers are more interesting than others and ones written for the language learner, rather than those which are simplified and abridged versions of existing books, are perhaps more engaging. Another option mentioned was to make your own graded reader by simplifying – both challenging and time consuming.

So we can encourage and provide choice, but not all students will be motivated to read on their own and, as a couple of ELT chatters agreed, if they “leave it up to students, they won’t get much out of them”. Time in class can usefully be spent using graded readers to encourage extensive reading for pleasure and for language development. Many activities were suggested.

• One student at the board writing new vocabulary. Other students listen and follow if there are enough copies.
• Students can make a personal list of vocabulary and then share with a partner, each explaining items that weren’t problems for them. Then change partners a few times, ending up with a common list of new vocabulary.
• An information gap activity: each student reads one chapter and then tells others about it.
• Ask all students to choose a book, read chapter one in class and then tell each other whether it’s good or not.
• Use short texts for pre-reading activities for the longer text students read at home.
• Students read at home and come back to class with 3-4 new words to share and recycle as a class.
• Read a chapter and predict what will happen. Invent the story as a class.
• Read to learners, particularly young learners, as an introduction to literacy.
• Use class readers as a springboard for discussion and writing.
• Students write letters to or from characters, characters’ journals etc.
• Students write a profile of their favourite character and why they like them.
• Role play scenes from books and add missing dialogue.
• Students write a review of a book.
• Students make a front page of the local newspaper.
• Students draw a character from a book before watching the film version.
• Students compare the book and the film.
• More advanced students compare the simplified version of a book to the original.
• Guessing activities. Who’s the author? Male or female? Chapter titles? Ending?
• Students suggest a continuation or a sequel to a story.
• Stop reading at a crucial point and offer a character advice, “If I were him, I’d… “
• Students each write a question about the book and then have a class quiz using all of their questions.
• Graded readers can be given to learners who have finished an activity before others.

Marisa suggested starting a reading circle. Once a fortnight, learners can talk about and review what they’ve read. LeedsAcademy has found the resources available on the OUP site useful for this. These resources help to structure the reading circle. We can also, as James suggested, simply hold more relaxed informal book club sessions. This is something I’ve enjoyed doing with learners and wrote about it in an earlier post and Mike reminded us of Jez Uden’s work with EFL Reading in Cafes.

Other links that were posted during the chat:

• The Rocking Horse Winner – Some old and some newer ideas for activities around a short story.
• OUP Bookworms Club Reading Circles
• Simply Cracking Good Stories – Creating new engaging and accessible adult fiction for low-literate immigrant adults.
• EFL Shorts – Short stories for EFL learners.
• Vocab Profile Tool for analysing text complexity.

I enjoyed my first ELTchat in a long time and will try to make them more often. Thanks to everyone who took part and shared so many ideas and resources. The transcript of the chat can be found here.

Listening for learning

Photo taken from http://flickr.com/eltpics by @mrsdkrebs, used under a CC Attribution Non-Commercial licence, http://bit.ly/tzwXS

This post is in response to Nathan Hall’s invitation to take part in an ELT Research Blog Carnival. The first topic is ‘listening’.

In a recent post, the Secret DOS asks, along with many other questions, if there is any more to language learning than memorisation, regurgitation and evaluation. I’d say there is. What that more is, though, may depend on who’s doing the learning and on what and why they want to learn. An essential element, however, must be that learners develop an understanding of how the language is used in different contexts and for different purposes by reading and listening to what and how things are written or said in that language.

But how do we cover all the many possible contexts learners will want to participate in? There isn’t enough time. There are too many learners. Their motivations, interests and goals are too diverse. Well, we don’t. Realistically, we can’t.

We can, however, help learners to apply what they do with us to what they want or need to be able to do in other areas of their lives. Some learners will do this naturally. Others will need support, guidance and encouragement.

With the limited time available to meet face-to-face in many contexts, we can try to expand the learning time by encouraging and guiding learners to take advantage of the language around them to get a feel for how language is used in a variety of contexts, to develop language skills and also to become more aware of their learning. (Even when time isn’t limited, this seems like a good thing to do!)

Jenny Kemp (2010) reports on a study of listening logs kept by students as part of a listening skills module. Essentially listening-focused learning diaries, the listening logs were used by students to record at least five listening experiences per week over the course of eight weeks. Information recorded in the logs included details of the activity – date, source and what happened – and a reflection on the experience. Learners could choose what kinds of listening they included according to their own interests, goals and lives. Any listening activity could be included – listening to songs, topping up mobile phones, a listening task found online, etc. Learners were asked to think about the types and variety of listening they do and how easy or difficult each experience was. They considered how factors such as accent, speed, background noise, interest or tiredness affected their ability to participate in the listening event. They reflected on how they responded, if they enjoyed it, if it was useful and what they would do differently when next in a similar situation.

The accounts in the listening logs showed that learners were aware of their language abilities and learning processes. Whether this awareness was developed through the listening and recording activities or whether learners already had a good understanding of this is not clear. However, having a record did seem to make it easier for them to recognise progress between instances of similar activities.

“This time it was better because I already knew what the machine was going to ask me, although I think that I can understand it much better than before.” (Learner 2)

They showed an understanding of what makes an experience more difficult and of the strategies they could employ to make it easier.  Instances where learners simply recorded their problems were opportunities for the teacher to offer feedback and advice.

One of the aims of the listening logs was that, as learners developed metacognitive awareness, they would be more able to take control, make decisions and direct their own learning and development. The entries provided evidence that learners anticipated difficulties in particular situations and took action to minimise these or that they set themselves learning challenges to move towards their goals. “Next time I’ll make my mind work harder, no subtitles” (Learner 9). Learners also recorded an awareness of the new language that they were learning from their listening activities.

Kemp found that the listening logs provide insights into students’ motivation for learning English through the situations they choose to participate in and their reflections on the experiences. The logs can also, she argues, “be instrumental in [motivation’s] generation”.

Keeping the logs seems to increase learners’ awareness of their language ability and learning processes and strategies, allowing them to use those insights to make decisions about future learning and language use.  It encourages learners to take control over their own learning and to recognise progress in areas that are relevant and important to them.

As Kemp writes in the introduction to the article:

“As language teachers, our goal should be to provide these learners not only with transferable skills but also with guidance, to raise their awareness and enable them to become independent learners who are able to exploit the potential learning situations in which they find themselves.”

Jenny Kemp’s consideration of the entries in her students’ listening logs provides us with insights into the thinking and learning processes of her learners. It contributes to our understanding of the diversity of learner motivations, preferences and experiences and were we to read similar accounts from our own learners, we would be in a better position to advise, guide and provide input related to their own particular contexts and goals.

Reference:

Kemp, J. (2010). The Listening Log: motivating autonomous learning. ELT Journal, 64(4), 385-95.

Language, personality and choice

Over the last few weeks, at the British Council ELTons awards and at the BELTA Day, I’ve had the pleasure of meeting people I had got to know through their written contributions and posts to online spaces – blogs, Twitter, forums, Facebook. Many of them I hadn’t seen – other than in photos – or heard, but I had an idea of what they’d be like and whether I’d enjoy spending time with them. When I finally met them face-to-face, I was struck by how accurate that idea seemed to be.

From people’s online writing and written interactions, it would seem that we are able to read and find out about not only ideas, opinions and experiences, but also their personalities.  Recent studies have also found that personality can be perceived through writing as Lin Qui et al write:

“Previous research has documented accurate zero-acquaintance personality judgments made on the basis of writing samples, and identified the relationships between personality and language use in various contexts. The current study extends the existing findings by examining associations between microblogs and personality traits. We demonstrated that personality traits are associated with linguistic cues in microblogs and can be accurately judged by unknown others.”(Qui et al, 2012: 716)

Much of the research seems to have looked only at word choice. For example, Yarkoni (2010) in an analysis of 100,000 words from almost 700 different blogs showed that word choice and personality were related. It is likely that other aspects of the language will contribute to the representation of who we are, but it is probably easier to focus on words through text analysis software such as the Language Inquiry and Word Count (LIWC) and studies such as these do support the impression that our personality comes across in our writing through the linguistic choices we make.

Roz Ivanič, introducing her book Writing and Identity: The Discoursal Construction of Identity in Academic Writing, suggests that “readers try to figure out who is speaking to them, even though they often have to do this by detective work: reading the texts around the text, and, less consciously, searching for the writer’s identity in the writing itself” (Ivanič, 1998: 2).  We will have all done this. We will have formed impressions of those we read online, making judgements about their expertise and understanding, their motivation, their personality. We can, I think, pick up on the small clues that indicate that someone might not be as friendly, helpful and open as they’d like us to think they are. Similarly, we can detect that someone is not as anti-social as they’d like to let on! We may think of a person as being fun, earnest, moody, intelligent, defensive, enthusiastic, dedicated, delusional, vulnerable or confident. We will decide if we like the person, if we are on the same wavelength, and if we’d enjoy spending time with them face-to-face – and all this from what they have written.

As we know, there is usually not just one way to communicate something. When we use language, in either its written or spoken form, we make choices. Those choices are significant in determining what is conveyed – about the topic, about our take on it, about our understanding of the world, about us. Michael Halliday’s work sees language as consisting of “a set of systems, each of which offers the speaker (or writer) a choice of ways of expressing meanings” (Bloor & Bloor, 1995: 2). We select – consciously or unconsciously – the word or phrase, the grammatical structure, the tone of voice, etc. best suited to our purposes in any situation. The more we understand the choices, the better we’ll be able to come across as we’d like and the better able we’ll be to help language learners find a voice – their voice – online in a second language.

Language learners and/or new writers can be very aware of not being able to express who they are accurately. Some of them aim for ‘perfection’, believing there to be one correct way to say something and that other options are sub-standard and to be avoided by proficient users of the language. Others may not know enough about the options available to them – grammatically or lexically. They might not yet be able to pick up on the implications of the choices they make or know how to create the nuances of meaning that they can in their existing languages. This awareness of the gap between who they are and what they can express can make them reticent to write (blog, tweet, or post) publicly if what they are currently able to produce does not allow them to present a version of themselves that they are happy with.

But everyone has something to say and share. We all have opinions, experiences, ideas and knowledge. All expression of meaning is an opportunity to move knowledge of a language forward, to show other ways of saying or writing something, to give choices. And, whether we are speakers of English as a first or a second language, we are always adding to the choices available to us. The more choices we have and the more we know and understand those choices, the more able we are to connect with and to influence those who read or listen to us, and the more power we have.

References:

Bloor, T and Bloor, M. (1995). The Functional Analysis of English: A Hallidayan Approach. London: Arnold.

Ivanič, R. (1998). Writing and Identity: The Discoursal Construction of Identity in Academic Writing. Philadelphia: John Benjamins Publishing Co.

Qui, L., Lin H. Ramsay, J., and Yang, F. (2012). You are what you tweet: Personality expression and perception on Twitter, Journal of Research in Personality, 46(6), 710-18.

Yarkoni, T. (2010). Personality in 100,000 Words: A large-scale analysis of personality and word use among bloggers, Journal of Research in Personality, 44(3), 363-73.

Two websites. One easy way to review language.

As I wrote a little while ago, I like to use little pieces of paper to focus on and record the relevant language in ESOL sessions. Once focused on and recorded, that language needs to be reviewed – in class, but also, ideally, by learners between sessions.

I can do things in class at the end of a session and in future ones and language often gets recycled quite naturally too. Getting the learners to review, notice and use the language between sessions is more of a challenge and I’m currently thinking about new ways to encourage learners with busy and tiring lives to do this. The reading group has been useful but I’d like to add aspects to focus more on language they read and hear in their own time. One of the first things I’ll try is asking them to find a word, a phrase and a sentence as Anna Pires suggests in a recent post.

But more about that another time. This post is really just to share something I’ve found to be a very simple, quick and quite effective way to produce material to highlight, review and push learners to recall new lexical items as well as to add a bit of variety, with the help of two very useful websites:

Discovery Education Puzzlemaker

Macmillan Dictionary

From the Discover Education Puzzlemaker page, choose to make a Criss-cross puzzle. Then with a selection of the most useful words from previous sessions, and the clear definitions from the Macmillan Dictionary, make your puzzle and print it out.

It takes minutes to prepare but the learners usually really enjoy the challenge and the fact that it is based around words from their stories and experiences. I did it most recently with a group where I want to encourage better recording and reviewing of language. This is a first step. I also made sure that learners all had a vocabulary notebook and next week, I’ll start to discuss how learners use these and will be referring to Kathy Fagan’s recent post on vocabulary notebooks and the book she’s just finished reading.

As well as learners completing the puzzle, checking answers also provides opportunities to recall the context in which it was originally used to ensure the meaning is clear and to consider other contexts of use and other words they can be used with. (See Leo Selivan’s post on In context or with co-text?)

When published materials, as good as many of them are, just don’t quite fit the learners and language we’re working with, it’s useful to know of easy and quick ways to add variety and to review and extend language knowledge. This, I think, is one of them.

Using yes-no questions to get people talking

A quick internet search of open and closed questions suggests that open questions are considered the better option to get a fuller response from people and to keep the conversation going. That makes sense. Closed questions can be answered in a word or phrase, while open questions require people to provide a bit more detail, describe experiences, give reasons, and opinions. So, when trying to encourage more speaking in order to maximise learning opportunities, we should be asking more open questions and fewer closed questions, shouldn’t we?

But, it may not be that straightforward. Asking yes-no questions in particular could well be a very useful way to get longer stretches of talk from our learners.

William Labov, in his study of language in the inner city in America, described some of the devices the researchers used in eliciting significant amounts of casual speech from the participants.

He writes:

In the section of our interview schedule that deals with fights, we ask “Were you ever in a fight with a guy bigger than you?” When the subject says “Yes” we pause and then ask simply, “What happened?” (Labov, 1972: 354)

In the footnotes, he elaborates:

Note that the original question calls for only one or two words; this is a “Yes-No” question. The subject first becomes committed to a narrative by a simple ‘yes’. He then becomes involved in the more detailed account of what happened as a necessary justification of  the claim made by the first response. The initial impetus provided by the Yes-No question is an important element in this procedure. Many formal interviews use questions of the form “Can you tell me something amusing (dangerous, exciting, important) that has happened to you?” Though such questions will produce some response in some listeners, they are quite unsatisfactory as a rule to both speaker and interviewer; the reasons for their inadequacy make a nice topic for discourse analysis. (Labov, 1972: 354)

Labov wrote this over 40 years ago and there will have been much discourse analysis conducted on this since then. If anyone would like to highlight any in particular, that would be very interesting. It would also be interesting to play around with this and pay attention to the difference using a yes-no question before open questions makes to the responses from learners, particularly from those learners who might be a bit more reluctant to talk.

Reference:

Labov, W (1972). Language in the inner city: studies in the Black English Vernacular. Pennsylvania: University of Pennsylvania Press.

Little pieces of paper

One of my favourite ways of capturing and recording language while working with small groups of up to about six language learners is on little pieces of paper. When these pieces of paper have featured in some of my posts, people have remarked on their use and, consequently, I’ve become more aware of how I use them and thought I’d try to write about them in a bit more detail. While possibly too simple a thing to write about, I’ve found them to be a very efficient, flexible and satisfying way to work with learners and their language. So, this is a this-works-well-for-me-it-might-for-you kind of post.

A few years ago, I was meeting with a group of learners in a room without a white board. A brand new building, great facilities, but I got the room without a white board! I brought a portable flipchart with me. I used it much as I would a white board and it was fine. It wasn’t ideal, though. The pages quickly filled up. I couldn’t erase parts of phrases to replace them with alternatives. I couldn’t quickly get rid of evidence that I had made a mistake! And, recovering and reviewing earlier language meant flipping frantically back through the previous sheets. So, not very efficient and not at all flexible.

While working with the learners, we all sat around the same table – much as a group sitting down to dinner would – and when a learner asked about something, or needed a word or phrase, I jumped up to write it on the flip chart. I didn’t mind doing this, but some learners seemed to feel they were putting me out by asking a question, some saying “no, no, it’s ok, you don’t need to write”. So, not very satisfying either.

During one session, I stayed at the table more and wrote the language on paper and put it in the middle of the table so that everyone could see. This had the advantage that I wasn’t using as much paper. To add flexibility, I tore the paper into smaller pieces. I realised that this meant that I could quickly retrieve language used earlier in the session and use it in new contexts. I could also bring similar language together to allow patterns to be noticed. The flexibility meant that learning opportunities were more accessible and exploitable. What might have remained a chaotic list of words and phrases on sheets of A1 paper, became language we could move around, discard, and add to easily.

I started to bring pre-cut paper into sessions with me but when I got the chance to use a room with a white board, I took it, relieved, and started once again to use the board. My board work, however, has always tended towards the chaotic. I start with good intentions, with images of colleagues’ well-organised boards in my head, but it quickly gets out of hand. The board needs to be cleared regularly – after having taken a photo of it, if I remember – and the language at the beginning of the session exists only in memory or on my phone (and, possibly, in the notebooks of learners!)

With small groups, though, I now hardly ever use the board any more. I have my pieces of paper in every session and I use them according to what’s needed with any particular group. I first mentioned them in my first ever post writing about my Tuesday evening ESOL group. They also featured when I wrote about what I had planned, but not how I planned it.

Most recently, I used them with a beginners group of Polish learners when the topic of what they do at Easter came up. Using a version of the language experience approach – putting the learners’ ideas into English – and with the ideas on using translation from George Woolard’s recent publication in mind, we gradually built up and captured their story on the bits of paper, breaking the sentences up into phrases. We read it through and focused on pronunciation. One person was there for the first time and didn’t want to speak in English but had helped to build up the story using L1. Then, I kept the beginning of each sentence where it was and we mixed up the rest of the pieces of paper. Using Google Translate (carefully), I played a translation of a sentence (and variations) in their language for the learners to reconstruct in English using the pieces of paper. We checked the result by playing the sentence in English on Google Translate. (I could have said it myself, but it seemed to give the learners a bit of a boost to hear their sentence said by another voice.)  The new learner participated in reconstructing the sentences by helping to select and arrange the language needed, seeming more confident as the session progressed.

Having the pieces of paper in the middle of the table meant that this was a very collaborative activity, with learners having to work together or at least monitor what others were doing or saying. We were able to start with what the learners wanted to talk about and work with that and, by doing so, the meaning was clear to them from the beginning. I just needed to check that I understood properly before providing an English version for it. And, I now have the set of pieces of paper that I can bring in next week to review and expand the language we encountered.

Following this, a learner wanted to know the word for ‘daffodils’ in English. We found it and I said that this was my favourite flower. For the last 15 minutes we asked and answered questions about our favourite flower, sport, colour, etc, all with the support of a substitution table made of little pieces of paper!

So, this is what I do. I often think that what we choose to do in class is guided by our personalities and how our mind works (or doesn’t). I need to keep things simple! I’d be very interested to hear what you do – either using pieces of paper – or in dealing with chaotic white boards!

Cool things that happened today (and yesterday)

All within the last 6 hours… (x2)

• I accepted the challenge from Mike Griffin to follow his lead and post about cool things that happened today. As is my wont, I’m bending the rules. So this post covers yesterday as well.
• Paying attention to small, positive things got off to a good start as I spotted two magpies as I drove to work which, as the rhyme tells us, signifies joy! (I’m not really superstitious but they always take me back to sitting on the bus on the way to school in Ireland, counting and assigning meaning to the magpies in the fields as we passed.)
• Sample copies of the course books, Life, arrived. I’ve had a quick glance and these look like they might be enjoyable to dip into – particularly for using the National Geographic video with lower levels. I’m looking forward to exploring them more.
• Looking up the word ‘bark’, ESOL learners found two meanings – the part of a tree and the noise a dog makes – a noise that some of them helpfully produced. It seemed important at that stage to point out that dogs say “woof, woof!” in English. A very informative comparison of animal noises ensued. (We were, however, initially looking for the other meaning of ‘bark’!)
• A learner’s iPad came to the rescue when learners started looking for technical words related to trains!!
• A learner agreed to teach a wee bit of Polish to community members at our Cultural Connections beetle drive next week.
• After working hard clarifying and discussing Mike’s (slightly adapted) Cool Things, ESOL learners loved the idea of writing their own lists. I’m looking forward to reading them.
• After exclaiming loudly to the whole office that our new, fancy, multi-function device printer was already out of toner, I realised that I had, in fact, sent my document to the wrong printer!
• Two of the learners in the literacies group for people with learning disabilities showed us how they dance along to Olly Murs singing Dance With Me Tonight. It was such a pleasure to watch and they obviously really enjoy doing it. We’ll need to work out a way for them to share their skills and enthusiasm with others.
• With some of the money left in our resources budget, I’ve ordered mini white boards. Finally!
• Noticing the positive, small things that have happened – in among the frustrations and the not so good things – has been a good exercise, something I’ll try to do more often, and a fun challenge. (Thanks Mike! 🙂 )

Learning Awareness

I want to lose weight. My son wants to gain weight. (Oh, that it were the other way around!) So far, we’ve been succeeding and awareness of that success is motivating us to keep going.  Fortunately, it’s been easy to gauge our progress using the bathroom scales!

While I’m not going to try to say that weight-loss is like language learning, success in learning is similarly motivating. It is not, however, so readily measured and recognised by those doing the learning. Tests and assessments can help but, as Scott Thornbury points out in a comment after a recent blog post O is for Outcomes, “often even informal assessment seems to focus on what the learners can’t do – i.e. their distance from the target – rather than what they can do.”

Learners (or potential learners) can easily get turned off if they don’t perceive that they’re making progress, if they feel that they’re not able, or if they don’t believe they’re ‘good language learners’. Learners are often more aware of what they can’t do (yet) – “Oh, my English is not good!”, “There are so many words I don’t know!” – rather than what they have learned and what they are able to do now that they weren’t before. We need to help them see that progress.  It’s important to be realistic about our abilities but it’s also important to know that we are improving – and indeed that we can improve – and to be aware of the difference learning is making.  Learning a language is such a long and unpredictable process that we need to be able to recognise the progress we make and the things we are able to do that we couldn’t before to keep us going.  In my experience and from my observations of and discussions with learners, doing so boosts confidence and self-esteem, as well as increasing motivation to continue learning.

We could, as is often suggested, set SMART goals with our learners. As they accomplish these specific, measurable, achievable, realistic and time-related goals, their progress is clear. These can be useful for some aspects of learning and can help to break down a bigger task into smaller steps. But, I’ve never much liked SMART goals for language learning in general and as John Sutter writes:

“language learning, far from being SMART, tends to be CASUAL:

C	Cyclical – language isn’t learnt step by step; items and skills need continual revisiting and review.
A	Asymmetrical – different skills and aspects of language may develop at different paces. ‘Spiky’ profiles, where a learner might have, for instance, advanced speaking and listening skills, but only intermediate reading, and elementary writing skills, are the norm rather than the exception.
S	Social – language learning is a social process rather than a measurable set of competences.
U	Unpredictable – how exactly learning takes place, and under what circumstances it occurs is still very mysterious. Learners do not all follow the same path.
A	Affective – language learning involves the whole person – their emotions and identities affect and are affected by aspects of the language learning process.
L	Local – language learning is highly context-bound, both in terms of what is learnt, and how it is learnt.”

(Sutter, 2009: 208-9)

Tyson Seburn recently reflected on where and how learning occurs in a very interesting post and recognised that his deepest learning comes on his own terms, and does not match expected outcomes.

So, if we accept the CASUAL and very personal nature of language learning – which I do – how do we help learners to see that they are learning and that they are making progress towards their ultimate goal of being proficient speakers of English and of being able to participate fully in the English speaking world around them?

How do we see learning? How do we know it has happened?

Tessa Woodward, during a panel discussion at this year’s IH DOS Conference, said that you know that learning has happened when “you find yourself able to do something or be something that you weren’t or didn’t before.”

Learners need to be able to recognise this. Some do, without our help. Others can overlook it, particularly those who feel less able to do things, who are less confident or easily discouraged.

As Adrian Underhill emphasised during the IH DOS panel discussion, “it’s the learning we need to look at […]. That’s what we need to track. That’s what we need to grow antennae for.  The single moving part that we’re there for is the learning and that’s what we need to see.” And, I would add, learners need to see it too. We can’t assume that they do.

In class, we can highlight when learners are able to do more than they could last week, that they are successfully using language in ways they hadn’t been doing before, that despite the look of fear that flickered across their face when writing in class was mentioned, they’ve done well with X and Y, so now need to concentrate on Z.  By providing support and advice, we can gently push them beyond “I can’t” to “I didn’t think I could but now I see I can and I’m relieved and quite chuffed!” What you do and how you do it will depend on the individual you’re working with.  In a post about one-to-one teaching within a group, Adrian Underhill talks about close-up teaching where he is able “to follow an individual learner’s subtle inner moves, or at least to recognise them and to make them visible using a variety of interventions.”

We can talk to learners about their learning, their language use and the difference learning is making for them and encourage them to reflect on it. This is something I do regularly. After being asked to think about it and report on it, learners are more aware of what they do, how they do it, and what has changed. These changes are our outcomes. Outcomes will probably vary according to learning goals and contexts. In my current context, outcomes often include feeling more able and more confident about using English in different situations and with particular people, being promoted at work to a position that requires more English use, people commenting positively on their language use, being able to understand a whole film in English or read a more demanding book.  During one recent conversation about language use and learning, a learner told us, “I know I can speak English now! I am free!”

By reflecting on and recognising their achievements in ways that are personal to them, learners become aware of how what they do helps them to learn and how that learning helps them to do and become what they aspire to do and be. By discussing it with others, they gain insights into what works for other people and what might work for them. And, by instigating and being involved in these discussions, we learn more about learning too.

Reference

Sutter, J. (2009) Planning and Assessment: Reflection, Evaluation and the Learning Cycle,  in Paton, A. and Wilkins, M. (eds) Teaching Adult ESOL: Principles and Practice. Maidenhead: Open University Press.

12 from ’12 for my 12th!

When I first read about Adam’s 12 from ’12 challenge to highlight our 12 best posts from 2012, I didn’t think it was something I’d do as I hadn’t yet written 12 blog posts. But after some lengthy calculations, I realised that if I counted my first ‘I’m here!’ post, this one would be my 12th!  However, rather than use it to say “Go on, read my posts!”, I’ll instead highlight some of the posts that I’ve enjoyed on other blogs throughout the year.

So, for my 12th post, here are 12 posts that have stood out in 2012!

One post that particuarly stood out for me is P is for Postmodern Method by Scott Thornbury which emphasises the diverse and chaotic nature of language learning and the unrealistic claims made by coursebooks. Scott outlines an approach proposed by Michael Breen in 1999 “that aims exploiting diversity rather than taming it.” This, I believe, is a reassuring read which acknowledges the real challenges faced by teachers and learners in a way that we are then more able to deal with them.

Josette LeBlanc echoes these sentiments in her post The ‘Don’t Know Mind’ and Teaching pointing out that “we use the textbook, we plan a few speaking activities so students can practise the past tense, and of course, we expect our students to be able to use it. To our surprise, the reality is usually very different.” Perhaps we should, she suggests, try entering the classroom with a “don’t know mind”. We could go in, as she quotes Gil Fronsdal, “holding what we know lightly so that we are ready for it to be different.”

That we value diversity is a key point in Genevieve White’s post, In Praise of Introverts, where she encourages us to be aware of and to value the more introverted students. (While you’re there, have a good look around the rest of the blog. There are lots of useful and interesting posts.)

Our awareness of diversity, and our approach to it, is also raised in Tyson Seburn’s post Considerations of the LGBQT in ELT materials where he looks at how LGBTQ issues are portrayed in ELT materials and classrooms and urges us all to “be aware and consider what messages we and our materials send.” An important read!

Just as our learners – their needs and experiences – are diverse, so too are the contexts we work in and some of my favourite blog posts are those that describe actual experiences with learners. I always enjoy a peek at what others are doing. There are many good examples of these and they’re a real pleasure to read but two particularly worth a mention are A Multilingual Lesson from Sam Shepherd and I don’t like bananas, but I like banana chips by Kevin Stein. These are both really nice accounts of interactions in English language learning contexts where there’s space for the learner contributions and for things to go in unexpected but fruitful (sorry!) directions.

In dealing with diversity, we have to be ready to break the ‘rules’. There have been a lot of posts about this topic and one that I really enjoyed was Michael Griffin’s Doing it the right way in the subway station and in class, particularly the pleasure he got not doing it right in the subway station!

Another blogger who has a wealth of useful and informative posts is Rachael Roberts. In her post Mindfulness for Teachers, Rachael describes being mindful in the classroom as being “totally present in the classroom (or anywhere else), time goes very quickly and we are really in a state of heightened awareness, feeling alert and alive. Communication flows easily between us and others and everyone seems to be really focused on the experience of learning.” Sounds good, eh? Her post goes on to provide more information and tips about how to develop mindfulness in the classroom as well as your daily life.

There are many other blog posts with interesting and useful insights and tips for use in the classroom. Of these, I’ve selected three that have particularly struck me and stayed with me.  Leo Selivan, in his Explaining the difference between (near-) synonyms post, reminds us that “with many near-synonyms the difference is purely collocational” a nice insight to pass on to learners to encourage them to pay attention to the company words keep.  Following Kevin Stein’s Some Notes from a Real-Time Journal, I’ve started trying to incorporate the use of a Real-Time journal. I still need practice, but so far the notes I have made have been really useful. In Word of the Week and Other Ideas for Business English, Vicky Loras describes useful and engaging activities that could be easily transferred into other contexts.

Finally, just as I love reading about the experiences of teachers in the classroom, so too do I really enjoy reading about learners’ experiences. Again, there are many good accounts in blogs, but I have to highlight Ken Wilson’s Diary of a Language Learner. Ken’s posts are such a pleasure to read that, although he is already a very well-known blogger, I had to include him in this my very first blog challenge contribution!

Thank you to all the bloggers mentioned here for the posts that have caused me to think, reflect, try new things, and smile! (By the way, if any of these bloggers are new to you, be sure to look around the rest of their blogs.) Thank you also for all the others I’ve  read throughout the year – the posts are such a great resource for practitioners around the world –  but unfortunately there are just too many to mention. And, thanks finally  to Adam for the challenge! 🙂

Encouraging Talk, Encouraging Learning

I was asked recently to give an ESOL workshop to volunteer literacies tutors. While all are experienced and well trained to use a social practices learner-centred approach with a range of literacies learners, the majority would not have had ESOL specific training. Also, many would be working one-to-one with a learner, either on their own or in a group setting. I thought for a long time about what would be most useful for them and what we could look at in the one hour we would have. After a few false starts in my planning, this is what I went for in the end (without the interactive bits).

The ESOL learner, like the literacies learner, is at the centre of the process. It’s what they want and need to be able to do in their contexts that should be the focus, helping them to become confident language users, successful language learners, responsible multilingual citizens, and effective communicators (and contributors!) The starting point should be the learner – not the grammar, the vocabulary or the skills.

The wealth of material around English language teaching can be confusing and overwhelming to those new to it. The focus on grammar and skills that comes across in many publications and in initial training courses can lead new practitioners to wonder how we can apply a social practices approach to working with ESOL learners. The approach outlined in Teaching Unplugged offers what seems to be an ideal solution. As the authors, Luke Meddings and Scott Thornbury, remind us:

“Learners are your primary resource. They have stories to tell, ideas to explain and feelings to describe.” (Meddings & Thornbury, 2009: 24)

They go on to say that:

“Allowing learners to express themselves, encouraging them to do this to the best of their ability, and showing them how they can do this more effectively, is the essential work of the unplugged teacher.” (Meddings & Thornbury, 2009: 24)

This is also the essential work of a literacies worker. The main differences  would be that there is usually less shared language and often more focus on improving speaking  with ESOL learners. So, building on the previous two quotes, we had one more from an NRDC Effective Practice Study which suggested that:

“One of the main tasks is to encourage classroom talk, transforming talk into learning and learning into talk.” (Baynham, Roberts, et al, 2007: 54)

As this study also highlighted, ‘talk is work’ in ESOL. But before we can take advantage of the learning opportunities offered by talk, we need to encourage the learners to talk. Some learners are very keen to express themselves and have lots to say. Others though, particularly new learners who are getting to know us, are nervous, hesitant, not sure if they should talk, if they can talk, and will need encouragement. So how do we do this?

Create the right atmosphere. We all do this already. Put the learner at ease, smile, laugh. Show interest and respect. Establish good rapport and treat them as equals and as fellow speakers of English (and other languages). This is what I was getting at in the post Language use for learning.

Allow space for the learner to make contributions. Build longer pauses into your own talk. It’s not comfortable to do this. We don’t easily tolerate pauses in a conversation but it’s worth getting used to. Learners need time to process what’s been said and what they want to say. Leaving space before we start an activity or topic will provide an opportunity for learners to bring up their own topic and this will usually be more relevant and memorable for them – you can always save what you’d planned for the following session. Not rushing to speak when a learner hesitates will allow them to continue their turn, to have the time to find the words and phrases themselves, and to allow them to initiate a topic change. A study by Scott Thornbury and trainee teachers showed that the time a teacher waits after asking a question was usually very short but that “even slight increase in wait time result in an increase in the quantity and quality of learner contributions and an increase in the number of learner questions.” (Walsh, 2011: 39-40)  (I’ll let Rachael Roberts tell you more about the wonder of wait time.)

Use prompts. Bring something along that you think will interest the learner. This could be anything – questions, texts, activities. It could be photos (ELTpics perhaps? ;-)), visuals, or visualisation tools like those featured in the Reflect ESOL approach.  When getting to know learners, I’ve found that things like maps & visualisation tools often work well. The focus is off the language and the conversation and on something that can be understood without much language, but a lot of information can be shared. It is, of course, important to be sensitive to difficult areas in a learner’s life that they may want to avoid talking about. You can also encourage learners to bring things along and to ask questions. It’s important for learners to get a lot of practice asking questions so that they’re not always the ones in the less powerful position of answering and responding – whether in the learning situation or the wider community.

By encouraging learner talk, by conversationalising all work, and being open to ‘off topic’ contributions, we find out more about them – both their interests and what they can do in the language – even about complete beginners, communicating through mime, drawings and dictionaries. This continues to give us information we can use to plan future sessions and gives us a place to start building on their language. So, how do we help learners develop their language? Selecting and adapting ideas from Teaching Unplugged… again, the following are some of the ways that practitioners could work with the language.

Before focusing on the language, react first to what is being said, to what the learner wants to communicate.

Recast the learners utterances by reformulating what they say to make it more like what we would usually hear. A lot of people, whether language teachers or not, will have a tendency to do this anyway. Parents and teachers do it with children as they are learning the language and university lecturers do it with new students becoming part of a new discourse community.

As we reformulate or help with vocabulary, we should make sure that we record the new language so that we can focus on it and come back to it. One of my favourite ways of recording the language that comes up in a session with small groups is on little pieces of paper (you can move them around, notice patterns, add to them). As you help learners with words and phrases they need to express themselves, write them down and keep listening. At an appropriate point – you may not have to wait until the end of their story (as long as you come back to it) – focus on some of the language more closely.

That appropriate point might need to be the following session after you’ve had a chance to research the language. You can refer to other sources – grammar books, coursebooks and online reference sites – between sessions and you can also refer your learner to them.

But your own knowledge of the language – through using it (& increasingly reflecting on it) yourself –  is also going to be useful for your learners. You know what sounds right. You’ll know if a word is missing or if something doesn’t sound right and how it would sound better. [In the workshop, we looked more closely at some language that had come up in one of my recent ESOL groups, prompting the participants to notice similarities and differences, patterns, pronunciation and collocation, and how a focus on the language could then bring us back to conversation.]

So you react to the message, you reformulate and help as needed (but not jumping in too quickly), you record and focus on the language. Repetition is a useful strategy. Learners can repeat a word or a phrase to make sure they have the pronunciation right, or to practice producing a longer sentence after you.

Repeating an activity can be a really valuable exercise. Studies have shown that simply repeating a task improved learners’ accuracy and fluency. I’ll let Rachael tell you more about this too, because this post is getting too long – Task repetition: helping students to improve accuracy, repertoire and fluency.

It’s then important to review and recycle the language. The language can be reviewed at the end of the session. Learners can be asked to recall the language by being reminded of the context it came up in, or by giving a definition or a synonym that they’ll recognise. Learners can select some of the language they think they’ll be able to use after the session, think of how they’ll be able to use it, in which contexts, rehearse and then use it and report back. Language can be reviewed and recycled in future sessions, in a range of planned activities or further conversation. As you become increasingly aware of the learners’ needs and interests, it’ll be easier to select other activities from the many sources around – in course books or resource books, on blogs or websites, or from colleagues.

That’s an as-brief-as-I-can-make-it overview of what we did. There is so much more I would have liked to talk about but we only had an hour. There were good discussions and I’m hoping it was useful for and useable by the participants. I’ve heard that the feedback on the day was positive.

If you’ve made it this far… well done and thank you! I wasn’t sure I was going to manage to the end myself 😉

So, as a wee reward, here’s some suggested further reading.

• A Multilingual Lesson by Sam Shepherd’s blog. This is a lovely example of creating the right conditions for genuine communication and consequently language learning.

References:

Baynham, M., Roberts, C., Cooke, M. and Simpson, J. (2007) Effective Teaching and Learning: ESOL. London: NRDC. (Also available online.)

Meddings, L. and Thornbury, S. (2009). Teaching Unplugged: Dogme in English Language Teaching. Peaslake: Delta Publishing.

Walsh, S. (2011). Exploring Classroom Discourse: Language in Action. Abingdon: Routledge.