Shrinking and linking (shrinkin_n_linkin) - practical techniques for teaching stress and reduced speech

Jason R Levine

This was the title of a webinar presented by Jason R Levine (@FluencyMC) as part of the recent ELT Techniques MOOC on Listening and Pronunciation.  What follows is a summary of what Jason had to say.

English is a stress-timed language.  This isn't common - most languages are syllable-timed.  We want our students to feel the stress (rhythm) of the language, and can draw their attention to it by using a bold font to show stress, for example.  However,

There's a fine line between raising awareness of pronunciation issues and raising stress (the other meaning!).

We need to raise awareness sufficiently to motivate students and follow up with loads of practice.  We shouldn't fill their heads with loads of rules.  It's usually best to follow the three Rs:

RELAX, REPEAT, REMEMBER

 

The rhythm of English is best described as 3/4, as in a waltz:

123

223

323

423

This is the beat of the language.  For example:

 

Students feel stressed.   (4 syllables)

     S         V       O/C

     1         2         3

 

The students feel stressed.   (5 syllables)

Th' students feel stressed.

 

The students are feeling stressed.   (7 syllables)

Th' students_r feelin' stressed.

 

The students have been feeling stressed.   (8 syllables)

Th' students've bin feelin' stressed.

The word order of subject, verb, object is common in English.  There are times when the word order is different, but these are exceptions - questions, passive structures, for emphasis, negative adverbials, etc.  There is a connection between the almost fixed word order in English and the rhythm of the language.  Because English gravitates to this word order, the rhythm has become 1,2,3.  This doesn't mean that every sentence is 1, 2, 3, but it does mean that this rhythm is always there.  It's in the background.

schwa

In English, unlike most other languages, each word which has more than one syllable, has a syllable which is stressed.  It's important to get learners very familiar with where the stress is - from dictionary use, from listening, and from your instruction.  Don't worry about trying to teach the more complex issues of secondary and tertiary stress.  Once students know where the stress is, the other syllables automatically become unstressed - hence the schwa everywhere!  Syllables reduce to the /ǝ/ and /ı/ sounds all the time.  It's important not to panic students about how they're going to remember all this - just make them familiar with it so that they know what sounds right and what sounds wrong.

Going back to our 'students feel stressed' example, we add in syllables to every sentence and yet the rhythm stays the same.  Just like in music, speed doesn't affect the rhythm.  You can play/say something fast or slowly, but if the time signature is 3/4, then the rhythm stays the same.

In English, when the grammar structures get more complex, they're harder to hear because the grammatical words aren't stressed.  We need to give students much more practice at listening to these kinds of sentences.  We can slow them down, but we must make sure the rhythm is maintained.  To be a fluent listener, we often tell our students they don't need to understand every word - they should focus on the content (stressed) words because they carry the meaning.  This is true, but, in order to be able to speak and write well, they also need to know the grammar words.

 

When teaching pronunciation, we shouldn't really highlight the shrinking and linking.  We should concentrate on the stressed words and, with familiarity with the rhythm of English, the reduced forms automatically become reduced.

 

Some learners think that stress changes according to how formal a situation is.  This is not true!  Stress and intonation are not the same thing. 

 

How many people are there in your family?

How many people_r there_in yr family?

 

What are you going to do on Friday?

What're ya gonna do_on Friday?

 

In these sentences, the stress or rhythm is the same, but the intonation isn't.  Intonation in informal speech (with friends) is very flat and we speak with a lower tone.  In formal situations, we usually speak with a higher tone and more intonation.  The key determiner as to whether someone sounds formal or informal, rude or polite, is INTONATION.

 

Techniques to use in the classroom

 

1.  Highlight word and sentence stress.

 

2.  Have students mark the stress after a listening task.  They already know the vocabulary and have understood the text.  Then they can listen again and mark the stress.

 

3.  Have students mark the stress before a listening task.  They try to predict where it's going to be.  Then they listen to check.

 

4.  Focus on stress in dictations:

• Dictate five sentences of authentic English - read them yourself or use a recording.
• Repeat each sentence at least three times, giving students time to write.  Do not change the speed or stress patterns.
• Ask students to write down the stressed words first.
• Pair students to compare their work and reconstruct the sentences as best they can.
• Elicit the sentences from the students or have them write them on the board.
• Ask students to highlight the word or sentence stress.
• As an extension activity, have students write responses and create dialogues or stories.

Sample dictation

1. What's the weather supposed to be like today?
2. Where do you feel like going for lunch?
3. Tell her we'll meet her around two.
4. Actually, I think I'll stay at home tonight and watch TV.
5. Do you want to meet at the library tomorrow?

Number 3 is particularly difficult - the shrinking and linking is blatant!

 

5.  Use meaningful shadowing and repetition.  Try scenes from movies and TV shows, music videos, commercials, roleplays created by students, scenes from plays and musicals, famous speeches, karaoke, poetry, limericks, jokes, tongue twisters, songs, etc.  When teaching pronunciation, we need to use repetition more as actors would when learning their lines.  Practice makes perfect!!



Warmers, coolers and lesson-planning for teenagers

This was the title of a presentation given by Dave Spencer as part of the recent Macmillan Online Conference.  What follows is a summary of what he had to say.

Typical qualities of a warmer

• Short - 'against the clock'
• Interactive (pairs, small groups)
• Competitive
• Fun
• Gets students thinking in English
• Recycles/revises vocabulary
• Gets students speaking - noisy!
• Raises energy levels

Warmer - the 3-letter game

Put 3 letters on the board and tell students they have two minutes to think of as many words as they can which contain those letters (in any order).  Encourage students to think about word formation in order to increase the number of words they get.  For example,

R        T         N

train       return      north     present      presentation      presenter    presented

turn       ration       restrain  rating        nature               natural, etc.

 

This is a very simple warmer which can be done with every level.

 

Warmer - alphabet cards

 

Have a series of A4 size cards with the letters of the alphabet on them available for a range of activities such as these two:

 

1.  Class spelling - give each student a letter.  Dictate words to the class.  Students have to come to the front of the class and arrange themselves in the correct order to spell out the word.  This is physical and a good way to get students moving.

 

2.  Category scramble - put the cards on the floor in any order.  Shout out a category.  Students grab a card and must be ready to give a word in the category that starts with that letter. The last student to grab a letter, or a student who can't think of a word, loses a life.  This is an 'extreme warmer' with lots of movement and lots of noise!

 

Warmer - running dictation

 

The classic activity where students are in pairs.  One of them is inside the classroom, writing.  The other runs outside to read a text.  They have to remember as much of it as possible and run back to their partner who writes it down.  The first pair to reproduce the text correctly, wins.

 

Typical qualities of a cooler

• Individual work
• Involves concentration
• Gets students thinking in English
• Practises listening and/or writing
• Is quiet, or even silent
• Is slow - has a calming effect on students

Cooler - opposites dictation

 

Students have to write down the opposite of what you dictate.  It is up to them what they write, as long as the sentences are grammatically correct.  For example, you say:

 

'There was a young woman.'

 

The students write:

 

'There was an old woman.'

'There was a young man.'

'There is a young woman.'

 

This is a quiet activity which involves students concentrating.  When they've finished, they compare their texts - they'll be similar, but different.  You could then ask students to re-convert their text so that it matches the original.  You could use a text from the coursebook.

 

Cooler - DIY word search or crossword

 

Give students an empty word search or crossword grid and a topic and ask them to make their own puzzle.  They could just list the hidden words, give definitions, or draw picture clues.  Students can swap with a partner or they can be copied for the whole class.  Empty grids can be found online.  These are great activities as the students are doing all the work!

 

Some considerations in lesson-planning for teens

1. The topics need to be relevant, but not so relevant that they'll discuss them in their L1!  Students need to be interested and focussed.
2. There should be a variety of skills work.
3. There needs to be a variety of interaction.
4. You need to consider pace and timing.
5. Include warmers and coolers.
6. Balance - this is the key to everything!



 

Using grammar to create a good relationship

Michael McCarthy

This was the title of a recent webinar hosted by Cambridge English Teacher and presented by Michael McCarthy.  He should have been joined by Anne O'Keefe, but unfortunately technical issues meant she was unable to connect.  What follows is a summary of what Michael had to say.

Grammar is more than just a set of abstract rules - it can be used to create appropriate relationships:

• Forms of address (sir, madam, mate, etc.)
• Formal vocabulary (e.g. we wish to advise you....)
• Hedging and vagueness (e.g. a bit hungry, hungry-ish)
• Indirectness (e.g. one shouldn't worry, it is hoped that....)
• Using tense, aspect and modality (e.g. I wondered..., I should be grateful...)
• Involvement strategies/use of pronouns - ways of making the person you're talking to feel more part of the topic of conversation
• Ellipsis (e.g. want some coffee? you ready?)

Corpus evidence

• Cambridge English Corpus - 2 billion words
• CANCODE Spoken Corpus - 5 million words (mostly informal speech)
• Cambridge Learner Corpus - 5 million words
• CANBEC Spoken Business English Corpus - 1 million words
• CLAS Spoken Professional/Academic Corpus - 1 million words taken from a hotel management context in Ireland

These corpora give us the evidence to understand how grammar is used.  Where grammar gives us choices, the choice you make affects how your spoken or written word is received.  Look at this example which goes from direct to less direct and, therefore, more polite:

• Where's the key?
• I hope you've got the key.
• I was hoping you had the key.

Or this example:

• I wonder if you can help me?
• I'm wondering if you could help me?
• I was wondering if you could help me?

All of these sentences are grammatically correct, but small changes affect the degree of politeness.

Some verbs are more polite and less direct when used in the continuous form (present or past).  For example:

• Are you needing something?
• I was wondering if I could ask you a question?
• I was hoping you'd come to visit.
• We were thinking we should finish this by Friday.

Look at this example in context:

 

or this one:

Customers and servers work hard from the beginning to set an appropriate relationship.

 

Use of pronouns (we versus you)

 

Choice of pronouns can create closeness or distance.  In this example, the salesperson uses 'you' and 'your' to make the customer feel involved - almost as if he owns the item already:

 



In this example, we see the pronoun of involvement used in an academic setting - a hotel and catering college:

Modality

 

Modality can express degrees of formality and degrees of imposition.

 

Looking at corpora for incidences of 'can I ...?' and 'could I ...?', we see a huge difference in the number of times these are used in spoken informal English.  We can also see that there are no examples in Cancode of 'might I ...?' being used.  Corpus enables us to see the degree of formality these forms express, but also in what context they're used.

 

Ellipsis

 

Ellipsis, the non-use of items normally considered obligatory, in conversation reinforces directness and closeness.  For example:

To conclude:

 

Incorrect choices can project the wrong relationship in terms of the degrees of directness and imposition.  The grammar discussed in this webinar is all very common and is normally taught at low levels, but we need to look at it again at higher levels to explore the subtleties.  Good teaching materials should include this grammar of choice to enable students to communicate effectively.

 





 

Joined up listening – how to understand natural speech

Johanna Stirling

This was the title of a recent webinar hosted by Cambridge University Press and presented by Johanna Stirling.  What follows is a summary of what she had to say.

Why don’t students understand natural speech?

·         It’s too fast for them to process.

·         The words aren’t spoken clearly.

·         They aren’t listening properly.

·         They don’t know all the words.

·         They panic.

The first two are probably the main reasons for non-comprehension.

How do we teach listening?

1. Skills development:

·         predicting

·         listening for gist

·         listening for specific information

·         inferring

2. Practise

These are important, but they are not enough.  Following on from practice, we need to analyse the wrong answers.  We need to find out why students got the answers wrong. 

Micro-listening – receptive pronunciation

It's important to focus on specific parts of what the students have already listened to, as in this example from Face2Face:

Pronunciation is normally associated with speaking, but receptive pronunciation is vital for listening.

Difficulties when listening

1. Ellipsis - incomplete sentences, which are very common in spoken English, are extremely difficult for learners to cope with.  We can give students conversations like this:

 

and ask them to supply what's missing, or give them the whole conversation, listen and cross out what they don't hear:

 

2.  Weak forms - where we have strong stress on one word and the others all get squashed, it is very problematic for learners.  We need to show students weak forms to help with their comprehension.  They don't necessarily have to say it that way themselves, but they need to recognise it.

 





 

 

 

3.  Elision - when we put words together, we often lose the last phoneme.  We need to raise students' awareness of this.

 

 

4.  Linking - it's often difficult to tell where one word ends and another starts - mad_idea_about, for example.  Look at how these combinations can sound to an untrained ear:

 

We should introduce linking to our students at pre-intermediate level at the latest.  It's really never too early to show students what's happening in joined-up speaking.

 

5.  Assimilation - some sounds change when they're near other sounds.  For example, 'sunbathing' sounds like 'some bathing', 'sandwich' becomes 'samwich', and 'handbag' sounds more like 'hambag'.

 

To conclude:

 

We need to make our students aware of all of these anomalies in spoken English through the practice of micro-listening and receptive pronunciation.

 

Reference

 

Listening in the Language Classroom by John Field.







 

 

What makes a good coursebook?

Robin Walker

This was the title of a recent webinar hosted by Oxford University Press and presented by Robin Walker.  What follows is a summary of what he had to say.




What makes a good coursebook?

According to Tomlinson and Masuhara in an article published in the ELT Journal (67/2), a good coursebook must:

• engage the learner effectively
• engage learners cognitively
• help learners to make discoveries about how English is typically used
• help learners to use English after the course has finished
• help learners to use English as a lingua franca

Four main criteria that make a good coursebook

• Input texts (reading and listening)
• Grammar syllabus
• Pronunciation
• Language as communication

1.  Input texts

Informative - a good coursebook tells you things that you don't know.  You are improving your general knowledge as well as learning English.

Engaging - good coursebooks have texts which are relevant to students.  Students are therefore engaged and want to listen and read.  Engagement should be way beyond a linguistic level.  Students must participate in the text and discuss the issues raised as they would do in their mother tongue.  Texts need to stimulate our students.

Authentically sourced - texts should be adapted from newspapers, magazines, etc.  Totally authentic texts, with no editing whatsoever, are often impenetrable for learners, so adapted texts are a perfect compromise.  They make the text accessible and introduce the quality learning we're looking for.

THINK ------------- READ -------------- (EXPLORE) -------------- REACT

 

2.  Grammar syllabus

 

Pedagogical - a good coursebook needs to bring existing grammar knowledge out.  Students need to be able to test themselves.  If the whole class already knows a particular aspect of grammar, the teacher doesn't need to waste time - he or she can go straight on to the output exercises.  If, on the other hand, students discover that they can't do the exercises, then the teacher can spend more time presenting the grammar.

 

Communicative - there need to be exercises that allow students to use the grammar in an engaging way - to generate genuine communication.  Learning grammar and using grammar need to go hand-in-hand.

 

3.  Pronunciation

 

Pronunciation should be integrated into a coursebook, so that students can communicate.  If students can't pronounce words correctly, they can't use them effectively.  The pronunciation part of a coursebook should lead on to a speaking activity.  It should be a facilitating tool to allow students to speak.  There should be good coverage of pronunciation in any coursebook.  From the lowest levels, we need to practise not just sounds, but linking, sentence stress, connected speech, etc.

The English File app

 

A good coursebook needs to deal with sounds in contrast.  For example, /ʊ/ versus /u:/.  Also, classifying sounds and associating sounds with different things - pictures, symbols, colours, etc. - are very useful ways of helping students to learn pronunciation.  New English File does these things very well.

 

A coursebook also needs software to help students practise pronunciation in their own time - particularly, in these days of mobile devices, an app.

 

 

 

 

 

4.  Language as communication

 

Personal - the output activities in coursebooks should be personal.  Students need to be able to talk about themselves and people they know.  Teachers need to be careful, though.  Some students, particularly teens or business people, may not want to talk openly about personal matters.  In these cases, teachers need to ensure that students work in pairs or small groups.

 

Possible - output tasks should be possible.  There needs to be enough structure so that students aren't intimidated about getting into the task - give them 'useful phrases' to use, for example.  There needs to be enough for them to say.  Don't give students a too open-ended task.

 

Purposeful - output tasks need to have an outcome.  If there's no end point, it's difficult to know when the task is finished!

 

Summary

• Input texts - informative, engaging and authentically sourced.
• Grammar - flexible, pedagogical, meaningful.
• Pronunciation - integrated, thorough, varied, mobile.
• Communication - personal, possible, purposeful.

 

Planning for the future and how we deal with it

This was the title of the first in the series of 'Jeremy Harmer Lectures' hosted by Pearson.  What follows is a summary of what Jeremy had to say.

The planning pyramid

AIMS

 

CLASS DESCRIPTION

 

 

ADDITIONAL         TIMETABLE           OUTCOMES

                 POSSIBILITIES             FIT                                                    

         

            ACTIVITIES     TIMINGS         PROCEDURES      INTERACTIONS       

 

      LANGUAGE EXPONENTS    LANGUAGE SKILLS   PERSONAL AIMS     AIDS 

   

Aims 

What students will be better able to do.

 

Class description

It's important to know who you're teaching - the size of the class, age, level, type of learner, etc. in order to be better able to anticipate problems.  Think yourself into the mind of the student, be problem ready and have solutions available.

 

Additional possibilities

Extra staff - just in case!

 

Timetable fit

How your lesson fits into the scheme of work, curriculum and syllabus.

 

Outcomes

These are difficult to plan for as we don't know what's going on inside our students' heads, but it is important to have measurable outcomes.  When the students have done the activity, what will have changed for them?

 

Activities

What will you do?  You need to vary and balance the activities to engage and motivate students.

 

Timings

Very difficult to plan accurately, though it gets easier with experience and through knowing your students well.

 

Procedures

How are you going to do something?

 

Interactions

S-S, T-S, etc.  The best lessons have a variety of interactions.  Don't worry about having too much TTT - TTT is a rich source for students' listening comprehension.  It's the quality of the TTT which is important.

 

Language exponents

Grammar, etc. - what you plan to teach isn't necessarily what ends up emerging in the lesson.

 

Language skills

What do we want students to work on?  The best lessons are often those which integrate all the skills.

 

Personal aims

It's important that the teacher has aims for him/herself, as well as for the students - action research, for example.

 

Aids

Classroom technology - whiteboard, coursebook, computer, projector, pens, IWB, etc.  It's not what you've got that matters - it's what you do with it.  Think carefully in planning about what students will use, not just you as the teacher.  Think about BYOD - using mobiles in class, for example.

 

Planning for a series of lessons using topics and themes

 

Look at this example of a series of lessons for young learners, using the topic of bananas!

 

 

 

Planning

 

How we think about a lesson (what metaphor we use) affects how we plan for it.  For example, if we think of a lesson as a journey, we plan for how we're going to get to the destination.  If it's a meal, we think about how to combine the best ingredients for maximum enjoyment.

 

The planning paradox - if you plan too much, you stifle the creativity every classroom should have.  If you don't plan enough, you lose sight of the aims.

 

Teaching unplugged (dogme) - this is where you don't plan very much - rather, you use the emergent language from the students to teach with.

 

Some say a compromise would be to plan your door into the lesson and a door out and not to worry too much about what's going to happen in the middle.

 

The planning pyramid is vital, especially for trainee teachers, but perhaps the door analogy is best for experienced teachers.  Moreover, it could be argued that the door out is more important than the door in.  People always remember more what happens at the end of something.  A teacher needs to be able to summarise what has happened in the lesson so that students take away the right message.  We need to end our lessons in different ways in order to engage and amuse students and make them want to come back.



 

 



Teachers as writers

Tessa Woodward

This was the title of a recent webinar hosted by Cambridge English Teacher and presented by Tessa Woodward.  What follows is a summary of what she had to say.

As teachers, we need to make sure that all of our writing is clear and accurate.  We need to proof-read everything we write and be strict about self-editing.  As good writers, we need to use lexical variation and avoid repetition.

These are some of the types of writing that teachers do:

Writing on the board

 

We can be creative even with the most basic writing we do, as in the example above where the lesson plan is displayed as a menu, with homework as a takeaway!  We can use colour to highlight information.

 

Comments on students' work

 

We need to vary our praise words and not use 'good' all the time!

 

Lesson plans

 

These are usually written just for ourselves (unless for observation purposes), so we tend to develop our own idiosyncratic ways of writing.

 

Logs, reflective diaries and journals

 

These are indubitable proof of your own CPD and should be written in such a way that they can be referred to by others.  You can use the Cambridge English Teacher website to keep your journal.  Critical Incidents in Teaching by David Tripp is a good reference source for this topic.

 

Writing with our students

 

Here, we are talking about interactive dialogue journals, where each student has a notebook in which the teacher writes a letter to him or her.  The student replies with a letter of their own written in the notebook.  This is an ongoing conversation and serves as a record of your learning relationship.  You can read more about this in Joy Peyton's book.

 

Materials creation

• Adapting coursebook exercises - making examples more relevant to your students, for example.
• Writing your own reading texts.
• Adapting authentic texts.

Check out eltteacher2writer.co.uk.

Writing for other teachers

• Get an idea first.
• Pilot it with your students.
• Think it through and read around the topic.
• Write it down as if you were explaining to a colleague (clear and informal).
• Read it out loud to yourself and others.
• Change any muddled parts and make them better.
• Spell check, grammar check, and note the word count.
• Look around at local, regional, national and international periodicals for language teachers - look at websites for teachers, too.
• Read their guidelines as to readership, length, style, format, etc.
• Edit your piece to make it fit the periodical you've chosen.
• Send it in with a pleasant cover note.
• Expect your idea to be edited!

Remember:

• Idea first
• Then write
• Then think about publishing

It's important that your motivation to write is clear.  You should be writing for you and for your students first and foremost.  Then, you want to share your ideas with colleagues and then the wider industry.  If this is the case, then rejection doesn't matter.

 

Conclusion

 

We write a lot as teachers and we learn incredibly useful writing skills by doing it.  We already are writers!

 

 

 

 

Principles of testing for the classroom

This was the title of a Cambridge English Teacher webinar presented by Shakeh Manassian and what follows is a summary of what she had to say.


What is a test?

Talking mainly about summative assessment, a test is/has:

• a tool or device
• an activity which helps to elicit certain types of performance
• a measure of learner performance - evidence of what a learner knows, understands and can do
• a defined duration
• a clear purpose
• a standard delivery format
• tasks which relate back to what was taught and learned
• a variety of task types to ensure fairness
• an evaluation of the evidence with reference to a set of criteria or a standard (this could be our own or an internationally recognised one, such as CEFR)
• marks which are indicative of the learners' underlying ability
• results which are used to make inferences about the ability of the learners
• these inferences must link back to the purpose for testing the learner, and the skills and abilities we thought we were eliciting

Purposes of testing

A clear purpose helps to identify:

• the kind of evidence we need
• the task types

The purpose also links to the way we:

• mark the learners' work
• interpret learners' performances
• make inferences about learners' abilities
• report our findings
• make decisions

The purposes of testing include:

• giving feedback
• checking progress
• analysing learning needs
• deciding what you're going to teach next
• selecting for a particular course
• assessing suitability for the next level

The purposes of international language tests will be different from those you use in the classroom.  In most cases, the purpose is generally to report on the performance of candidates in such a way that organisations that use the results can make decisions, for example, for selection.

Qualities of good coursebook learning tasks

• Focused
• May come before or after a presentation of new language
• Are part of a series of learning tasks
• Fit in with the curriculum
• May lead to freer activities
• Often have an example at the beginning
• Are repetitive
• Help learners understand what has been taught
• Give learners an opportunity to practise

All of these things make learning tasks very different to testing tasks.  Such activities are not suitable in a testing context, not least because they repeat the same piece of language many times.

What makes a good testing task?

• it has a clear purpose which is stated in writing (for example, in a syllabus or handout)
• it's linked to a given model of language teaching and learning
• it makes the best use of the time available
• it tries to be authentic
• it isn't focused on a single element of language
• it has a clear marking scheme

What makes a good reading learning task?

• it exploits the reading text
• it develops a variety of reading skills
• it takes account of the classroom context
• it tries to develop other learning skills
• it tries to develop other language skills

What makes a good reading testing task?

• it tests a variety of reading skills.
• questions are ordered in the same order as the information appears in the text - we are testing comprehension, not information location.
• questions are clearly worded and are appropriate to the level.  All students should be able to access the questions - we are testing their ability to find the answers.
• questions should be unbiased.
• questions shouldn't contain the same wording as the text - we should paraphrase so that students have to demonstrate their understanding of the language.
• each question should test only one reading skill.
• all options in multiple choice questions must relate back to something in the text.
• there needs to be a clear indication of the marks being allocated to each response.
• questions must have the right level of difficulty.
• texts should be interesting to our students and as authentic as possible.
• texts must allow us to test the kind of skills we're interested in.
• the selection of the topic and the sources should reflect the purposes of testing.
• the length of the texts should be appropriate for our purposes and for the time available.
• a variety of texts and question types should be used to be fairer to the students and to enable us to make broader inferences about what a learner can do.
• the test must allow the comparison of performance across huge cohorts of candidates.

Testing speaking

• there needs to be a clear purpose.
• we need to have a clear idea of the performance we want to elicit.
• there needs to be a clearly defined format.
• the testing tasks and questions must be clearly designed.

Conclusions - some principles of testing

We need to have:

• a clear purpose
• a clear understanding of how the results will be used
• a clear identification of the performance to be elicited
• designed tasks that elicit enough of this performance
• tasks that are fair to learners
• a set delivery format
• clear marking criteria and marking schemes
• a clear approach to the interpretation of the results

We also need to:

• know what each of the questions we've designed is testing
• make sure that we're testing key skills more than once, but that we're not overtaxing the learner
• be able to relate the results back to the skills we've tested
• be consistent in our approach each time we test our learners
• document decisions and actions

 

Helping your students to become effective writers

Julie Moore

This was the title of a recent webinar hosted by Oxford University Press and presented by Julie Moore.  What follows is a summary of what she had to say.

Writing in a digital age

What do we write?

• shopping lists
• greetings cards
• e-mails
• text messages
• Facebook updates and comments
• online reviews
• Tweets
• blogposts and comments
• personal profiles
• etc., etc.

Of this list, perhaps only the first two are handwritten.  Everything else is typed.  We are probably doing more writing than ever before, but not by hand.  Writing content isn't just by professionals anymore.  Everyone writes and publishes online.  Writing skills, therefore, should be an increasingly important part of what we teach, but they are often neglected.  Far too often, writing is moved to a homework task and then taken in and marked, but without any meaningful teacher input.

 Noticing features of texts

The first step in improving students' writing is getting them to understand how writers convey information and ideas effectively to their readers.

When speaking, you're usually face to face.  You're in the same place, you have a shared context.  You have gestures and facial expressions to help with communication.  You can ask for clarification.  Also, listeners tend to be sympathetic and forgive grammatical errors.  In writing, the situation is totally different.  You often don't know who is reading your work.  You need to be much clearer and pay much more attention to accuracy when you write.

How should we notice?

We should start with a reading text and work with it in the usual manner - lead-in, vocabulary analysis, comprehension questions, etc. - so that students become very familiar with it.  Then we can go back and analyse the features of the writing in order to understand what makes it readable.  It's important to integrate reading and writing skills.

What features should we notice?

1. Genre - When writing, it's very useful to start with a model to learn about the genre; the appropriate style of writing, the type of vocabulary to use, etc. 
2. Structure - We can focus on a particular aspect of structure, topic sentences for example, and get students to recognise it and understand what makes it effective.
3. Coherence and cohesion - Get students to look for the language and mechanisms that link ideas together.

Follow the noticing with a writing activity.  Ask students to transfer the principles of what they have seen to their own writing.  You must set them an easier task to write than the text they've just read.  For example, you could get students just to write effective topic sentences.  When they've written them, swap with a partner who has to guess what's to come in the rest of the paragraph.  This will tell them if they have written a good topic sentence.  Alternatively, when a complete writing task is done, ask students to highlight or underline their topic sentences and check that they're clear and that all of the supporting sentences are relevant.

The important thing is to get students thinking about how they write and how they convey their meaning to the reader.

Stretching students' writing

The key here is to focus on a specific skill.  For example:

Summarising

• this is a useful skill in many contexts (profile writing, review writing, etc.)
• it's about expressing key information concisely
• it's paraphrasing and reusing language from the text - very important to prevent plagiarising, especially in the 'cut and paste' age.
• it's ideal for pairwork and groupwork

If you've been working with a text for a while and the students are very familiar with it, it's a valid exercise to ask them to turn it over and summarise it from memory.  For longer and more complex texts, get students to extract some keywords from which they then have to write a summary.

Single sentence summaries are fun and quick to do.  Give students news stories and ask them to summarise them in just one sentence.  For example, a newspaper article might elicit:

Gareth Bale moved to Real Madrid for £85 million.

 

You then ask students to elaborate, for example, by asking, 'Who's Gareth Bale?'  This could lead to:

 

Welsh footballer, Gareth Bale moved to Real Madrid for £85 million.

 

'What is Real Madrid?'  'Where did he move from?'

 

Welsh footballer, Gareth Bale moved from Tottenham to top Spanish team, Real Madrid for £85 million.

 

'When did he move?'  'Is £85 million a lot for a footballer?'

 



In September, Welsh footballer, Gareth Bale broke the world transfer record when he moved from Tottenham to top Spanish team, Real Madrid for £85 million.

 

Now, we have a very good summary sentence!  We have stretched the students so they have written more, but still limited them to one sentence.  This encourages students to use prepositions, reduced relative clauses, etc., and moves their writing from the simple sentence to a much more complex one without ever having to talk about grammar!  We are gently pushing our students to do better.

 

Stretching students' writing - a summary

• Focus on specific micro-skills: summarising, describing a sequence or process, persuading, making suggestions, etc.
• Give short, classroom activities which involve pair and group work.
• Gradually build and stretch language skills
• Reading/listening/speaking into writing - you could get students to listen and then summarise what they heard - the summary doesn't have to be based on a reading.  You could even get students to summarise a group discussion.

Drafts and feedback

 

How do we give feedback on students' writing?

 

Some traditional ways:

• Correct everything.
• Underline or highlight where mistakes are and ask students to correct their own work.
• Use a writing correction code.
• Write comments (both positive and negative) on students' work.

 

Some alternatives:

• Give focused feedback - don't try to give feedback on everything at the same time because students are overwhelmed, put the work away and forget about it.  It's better to focus on one area - structure, content, grammar or language.
• Write questions and prompts that students have to respond to.
• Get students to rewrite parts of their work, based on the feedback you've given, rather than all of it.
• Get students to evaluate, check and edit before they hand in their work.  Ask students to bring their work to class and give them clear guidelines on how to check it - perhaps in groups.
• Teach editing an proofreading skills.

Develop a personal proofreading checklist

 

1. Get students to make their own proofreading checklist of common language issues, based on feedback on previous writing assignments.  They could include:

• general language areas - spelling, punctuation
• areas of grammar - subject-verb agreement, articles, etc.
• areas of vocabulary - uncountable nouns, collocations, etc.

If you are going to do this in class, get students to bring in lots of examples of their work from past lessons.

 

2.  It can be very difficult to spot errors in your own writing, so get students to work in groups and discuss how they can use the tools and techniques below to systematically check their writing.  Get them to come up with other ideas of their own.

• computer spell-check
• computer 'find' facility
• dictionary
• peer feedback
• reading aloud

Teaching writing skills - a summary

• Noticing features of texts: reading into writing.
• Understanding and applying key principles.
• Focusing on specific writing skills.
• Stretching students' writing skills.
• Varying feedback.
• Teaching editing and proofreading skills.