Hello everyone!
Hello everyone!
I'm so sorry I couldn't be there live during the last couple of recordings. Just finished watching Week 4 and I had to stop myself from typing my thoughts and praise for all the fantastic ideas shared into the chat box, so here is my (lengthy) response to another excellent session!
There were plenty of great activities to try out for teaching reading, some of which have confirmed my own beliefs, such as Tips 1 and 2, not letting students read a text aloud if they've never seen it before and pre-reading for them. It is incredibly daunting reading aloud in a foreign language anyway, let alone something they haven't come across previously, especially for weaker students. One of mine doesn't even like doing it in her own language, so much so that the school told us not to force her to read things aloud (English is ok though, apparently!)
TTT is again called into question here, but these are incredibly useful tasks for our learners! I always let them hear me read something first, as it helps them to identify and register tricky pronunciation and allows them to hear one of the many styles of speech and accents there are in the English-speaking world - They often question my pronunciation due to Scottish influences (I say föööd, if you're wondering) but that's the great fascination with languages - there can be so many varieties! I definitely use lots of enthusiasm to keep them interested and I hope they will pick up on things and try to imitate.
There are many wonderful styles of speech in languages which can be lost in L2 or the intonation used by learners of English can often depend on L1. I sometimes find it quite a challenge encouraging my Swiss students to have a bit more enthusiasm and energy in their speech when reading aloud (or speaking English in general) because they might not speak like this in their L1 - especially the boys - and they find it quite fake, when it really isn't meant to be! I also wonder if they are reading without trying to engage the listener because they are concentrating, that they want to get it over with or do they think that when reading a text aloud - or doing a speaking activity - in class that it isn't real? We don't spend our days reading parts of newspaper articles or exercises out loud, but it is very much called for when reading parts of novels, interviews, etc.
I was teaching some advanced level Italians last year and although they were motivated and many had a very good level of English, they were surprisingly monotone, which could be viewed as off-putting for the listener (or in my case, I thought they were being sarcastic!) This was surprising for me because I thought that the Italian language was full of rising intonation!
The more we give students the opportunity to read aloud in a meaningful way, the more we can help them sound more natural in English.
On a side note, I've been watching Blue Planet II recently and I really think that students of English should listen to Sir David Attenborough at some point in their lives, to let themselves be swept away by his superb, engaging narrative style and realise how effective one can be with spoken language. A British national treasure with a superb, soothing voice!
Tip 3 certainly stopped me in my tracks because I have been encouraging my more advanced students to do this since the beginning of my teaching career! This is most definitely because of my own language learning experience from university. We studied translation in the final year of my French degree and had to sit the exam without a dictionary, therefore our professors trained us to read around the text and try to work out the meaning through context because there isn't one particular way to translate something. While I see your point, Penny, I do think that this skill can be more beneficial than you think because today I am much more uninhibited by unknown words and don't feel the need to look things up unless it impedes comprehension or starts to annoy me (often the case with German!). Only then do I highlight or write it down and resort to my beloved Word Reference (I have a love-hate relationship with German http://Leo.org because there are usually a ton of possible options to choose from - Na ja!) I also think it's a good exercise for the brain, much like searching your memory instead of Googling :)
Although I don't do a lot of writing activities in my current job, I'll be sure to pass on these excellent tips to my colleagues as I am sure they will appreciate them!
I recognised some great techniques to teach this often tricky skill, such as allowing peers to give feedback. I must admit that, on reflection, that I just expected them to do it without giving them a model for how to be constructive with their criticism, but it is the perfect opportunity to teach teenagers some life skills for times in future when they may have to be diplomatic, be the bearer of bad news, and let's not forget about giving positive, sincere feedback!
I also fully agree that we need to check student work afterwards. I rather enjoy sticking their writing up around the room and walking around with them, reading, commenting or giving written correction, which is also an ideal moment to support them in their peer assessment task. I would also ask them to only identify 3 good things about the text and one (max 3) they think their classmate should work on ("3 Stars and a Wish", as is often used in the primary classroom.) and have stronger students only focus on one or 2 texts to allow others to comment - I once asked students to go around correcting some texts but the strongest student in the class did all of them leaving nothing for the others. Lesson learned!
Thank you for telling us about the tools to help decide which words to teach when using texts or understanding their frequency. I'm really impressed with Word and Phrase and was happy to see that Text Inspector/English Vocabulary Profile was mentioned. Cambridge have hosted a few seminars here in Switzerland about this over the past year or so and it's been my go-to website, but I think I'll use Word and Phrase as well now. It never ceases to amaze me the level of what you assume will be low-level words... There is also an English Grammar Profile page, but it isn't as intuitive according to the presenter who told us about it. I also use Google Ngram to identify how common words are but I'll post these in the ideas section.
Love the texting ideas and will be using these at some point! Also a great way to keep noisy classes quiet, excellent!
I could go on, but I've said quite a lot already and should probably leave some time for deeper reflection and something to say for the final assignment, so I'll take this opportunity to say a huge thank you to Penny, the iTDi team and all the participants out there for a fantastic few weeks full of thoughts and ideas to take away and contribute to my teaching! Let's keep in touch on Facebook and LinkedIn and I hope to meet you again somewhere - on an iTDi course, at a conference or elsewhere! If you're not doing anything the third weekend in January, I'd love to see you in Switzerland at our English teachers' association conference and I hope to make it to IATEFL one year. Unfortunately it's on over my birthday, but I try to catch up afterwards online.
All the best and Merry Christmas for those celebrating it soon!
I'm so sorry I couldn't be there live during the last couple of recordings. Just finished watching Week 4 and I had to stop myself from typing my thoughts and praise for all the fantastic ideas shared into the chat box, so here is my (lengthy) response to another excellent session!
There were plenty of great activities to try out for teaching reading, some of which have confirmed my own beliefs, such as Tips 1 and 2, not letting students read a text aloud if they've never seen it before and pre-reading for them. It is incredibly daunting reading aloud in a foreign language anyway, let alone something they haven't come across previously, especially for weaker students. One of mine doesn't even like doing it in her own language, so much so that the school told us not to force her to read things aloud (English is ok though, apparently!)
TTT is again called into question here, but these are incredibly useful tasks for our learners! I always let them hear me read something first, as it helps them to identify and register tricky pronunciation and allows them to hear one of the many styles of speech and accents there are in the English-speaking world - They often question my pronunciation due to Scottish influences (I say föööd, if you're wondering) but that's the great fascination with languages - there can be so many varieties! I definitely use lots of enthusiasm to keep them interested and I hope they will pick up on things and try to imitate.
There are many wonderful styles of speech in languages which can be lost in L2 or the intonation used by learners of English can often depend on L1. I sometimes find it quite a challenge encouraging my Swiss students to have a bit more enthusiasm and energy in their speech when reading aloud (or speaking English in general) because they might not speak like this in their L1 - especially the boys - and they find it quite fake, when it really isn't meant to be! I also wonder if they are reading without trying to engage the listener because they are concentrating, that they want to get it over with or do they think that when reading a text aloud - or doing a speaking activity - in class that it isn't real? We don't spend our days reading parts of newspaper articles or exercises out loud, but it is very much called for when reading parts of novels, interviews, etc.
I was teaching some advanced level Italians last year and although they were motivated and many had a very good level of English, they were surprisingly monotone, which could be viewed as off-putting for the listener (or in my case, I thought they were being sarcastic!) This was surprising for me because I thought that the Italian language was full of rising intonation!
The more we give students the opportunity to read aloud in a meaningful way, the more we can help them sound more natural in English.
On a side note, I've been watching Blue Planet II recently and I really think that students of English should listen to Sir David Attenborough at some point in their lives, to let themselves be swept away by his superb, engaging narrative style and realise how effective one can be with spoken language. A British national treasure with a superb, soothing voice!
Tip 3 certainly stopped me in my tracks because I have been encouraging my more advanced students to do this since the beginning of my teaching career! This is most definitely because of my own language learning experience from university. We studied translation in the final year of my French degree and had to sit the exam without a dictionary, therefore our professors trained us to read around the text and try to work out the meaning through context because there isn't one particular way to translate something. While I see your point, Penny, I do think that this skill can be more beneficial than you think because today I am much more uninhibited by unknown words and don't feel the need to look things up unless it impedes comprehension or starts to annoy me (often the case with German!). Only then do I highlight or write it down and resort to my beloved Word Reference (I have a love-hate relationship with German http://Leo.org because there are usually a ton of possible options to choose from - Na ja!) I also think it's a good exercise for the brain, much like searching your memory instead of Googling :)
Although I don't do a lot of writing activities in my current job, I'll be sure to pass on these excellent tips to my colleagues as I am sure they will appreciate them!
I recognised some great techniques to teach this often tricky skill, such as allowing peers to give feedback. I must admit that, on reflection, that I just expected them to do it without giving them a model for how to be constructive with their criticism, but it is the perfect opportunity to teach teenagers some life skills for times in future when they may have to be diplomatic, be the bearer of bad news, and let's not forget about giving positive, sincere feedback!
I also fully agree that we need to check student work afterwards. I rather enjoy sticking their writing up around the room and walking around with them, reading, commenting or giving written correction, which is also an ideal moment to support them in their peer assessment task. I would also ask them to only identify 3 good things about the text and one (max 3) they think their classmate should work on ("3 Stars and a Wish", as is often used in the primary classroom.) and have stronger students only focus on one or 2 texts to allow others to comment - I once asked students to go around correcting some texts but the strongest student in the class did all of them leaving nothing for the others. Lesson learned!
Thank you for telling us about the tools to help decide which words to teach when using texts or understanding their frequency. I'm really impressed with Word and Phrase and was happy to see that Text Inspector/English Vocabulary Profile was mentioned. Cambridge have hosted a few seminars here in Switzerland about this over the past year or so and it's been my go-to website, but I think I'll use Word and Phrase as well now. It never ceases to amaze me the level of what you assume will be low-level words... There is also an English Grammar Profile page, but it isn't as intuitive according to the presenter who told us about it. I also use Google Ngram to identify how common words are but I'll post these in the ideas section.
Love the texting ideas and will be using these at some point! Also a great way to keep noisy classes quiet, excellent!
I could go on, but I've said quite a lot already and should probably leave some time for deeper reflection and something to say for the final assignment, so I'll take this opportunity to say a huge thank you to Penny, the iTDi team and all the participants out there for a fantastic few weeks full of thoughts and ideas to take away and contribute to my teaching! Let's keep in touch on Facebook and LinkedIn and I hope to meet you again somewhere - on an iTDi course, at a conference or elsewhere! If you're not doing anything the third weekend in January, I'd love to see you in Switzerland at our English teachers' association conference and I hope to make it to IATEFL one year. Unfortunately it's on over my birthday, but I try to catch up afterwards online.
All the best and Merry Christmas for those celebrating it soon!
my third weekend working straight so will read a bit later but the beginning got me interested. Wish you could have been there, Penny is great.
ReplyDeleteHannah McCulloch Thank you for sharing your thoughts. I have one quick comment on TTT. I don't think of reading out loud as actual TTT, but rather input. What do you think?
ReplyDeleteHi Julia Blinova. I thought it was simply the teacher talking during class time, but maybe I'm wrong? Thanks for bringing it up! Maybe Penny and the others can comment, although I realise the course has finished for some!
ReplyDeleteI have to say TTT can be input but as I think Penny would agree it is in how comprehensible is it and at their level which would let it be input. If the grammar is beyond them or the vocabulary too far beyond it just becomes a waste of time, at least as regards input. How you use it rather than just what you use. Remember even not the greatest exercises will help students learn if they put enough time and effort into it. I think there are better ways but TTT is not evil but it can be evil depending upon how much thought and care you use it.
ReplyDelete