Oxford Big Read - an introduction to setting up a class library and using readers

This was the title of a recent webinar hosted by Oxford University Press and presented by Verissimo Toste.  He based his talk on his experience of setting up a class library for 25 - 30 teenage students.  The idea was that students chose the books they wanted to read and did so at their own pace. They were encouraged to use readers as a tool to learn the language; the scheme was supposed to appeal to them as language learners, not as readers.  What follows is a summary of what Verissimo had to say.

The importance of reading to learn English

• Remember to tell your students regularly how important reading is.
• If you go to the gym and do exercise, you will get fitter.  You don't need to know what the muscles are or what anatomy means.  In the same way, if you read, you will learn - you don't necessarily need to know how every grammatical structure works.

Reading needs to be:

• voluntary
• routine - i.e. 15 minutes a day, not one hour once a week.
• beyond the classroom

Comfort leads to routine

• Stories must interest students from the beginning - they must choose the book.
• Stories must be appropriate for the level - that is, knowledge minus one. No more than 2 or 3 words per page should be new or difficult.  The student shouldn't need to use a dictionary.
• Establish a reading routine of 15 minutes per day.

Selecting stories

• There is a huge amount of choice out there!
• A library needs about 1.5 books per student.
• Get catalogues from publishers and use them as a reading comprehension exercise.
• Allow the students to choose the books.  Tell them to:
• look at the cover
• consider the title
• read the back cover
• look through the illustrations
• sit and read a page comfortably
• Use the 'find your level' page of the OUP website.

Reading in class

• Create a social environment.
• Use reading as a five-minute activity at the beginning of a class whilst you're setting up the room.
• Encourage students to pick up their readers if they finish an activity early
• Have ten or fifteen minutes of reading at the end of every class.
• Build a habit where reading becomes a part of every class - this routine may take up to three months to establish.
• Encourage students to talk about their books and share ideas - because everyone is reading a different book, they will want to talk to each other about them.
• Make students aware that these books have been written for them.
• Talk to students about where and when they read outside of class.
• Focus on the students who are reading and build the numbers up month by month.

Enthusiasm leads to involvement

 

Here are some reading related activities aimed at generatingi students' enthusiasm which will get them involved and lead to more language learning.

 

1. Posters

 

This is a good first activity.  Students make a poster of the book they are reading, to include the title, an illustration and a sentence or some key words. The posters are displayed in the classroom in order to help other class members decide which book to read next.

 

The posters don't have to be done on paper - they could be digital (using Glogster, for example) or they could be powerpoint slides.

 

2. Make a film poster from the book

• Give the book a new title?
• Who would be the stars - celebrities? classmates?
• What images could be used to best illustrate the book?
• How about making a trailer?

This is a very engaging activity which allows students to use their imagination.

 

3. Wordle

 

Make a word cloud from a text from the book.

 

4. Snap

• Students choose ten sentences from the story and copy them into their notebooks.
• Students decide which is the keyword in each sentence and underline it.
• Students write each sentence on a card without the keyword (like a gapfill).
• They write the keywords on different coloured cards.
• They play the game of 'snap' in pairs.
• The games relating to each book can be kept and re-used.

5. Speaking and interviewing a character

• Students choose a character from the book they are reading.
• They write questions to ask that character.
• They role-play interviewer and interviewee with a partner who has read the same book.
• Students can make up answers if all the information they need is not in the book.

6. Write a postcard to a character in the book

• Students read and reply to each other's postcards.

These activities create enthusiasm.

To conclude

Why should students read a lot?

• To extend their contact with the language
• To reinforce classroom language
• To contextualise language
• To increase motivation
• To expose students to new experiences
• To give them a feeling of achievement

Corpora and the advanced level: problems and prospects

Michael McCarthy

This was the title of a recent Cambridge English Teacher webinar presented by Michael McCarthy. What follows is a summary of what he had to say.

Key issues at the advanced level

Beginner level English is easy.  Students need to know basic vocabulary and grammar.  Once you get up to upper-intermediate and advanced levels (B2 - C1 - C2), though, it gets difficult!  There really isn't much consensus about what we should teach at advanced level, but evidence from corpus can help us decide.

Once you get beyond the 2000 or so most common words, vocabulary becomes a vast catalogue of low-frequency items, so how do we know which words to teach?  Grammar loses its sense of progression and tends to be a rag-bag of difficult and arcane items.  How do we bring a sense of usefulness to the grammar at this level?

Assessment targets become more difficult to distinguish at higher levels.  For example, fluency:

• B2 - fluent
• C1 - very fluent
• C2 - extremely fluent

What does this mean?  How do we judge it?  Lower level learners get lots of opportunities to show their level in exams.  Higher level students perhaps don't.

Vocabulary

The English Profile programme uses corpora to answer questions about vocabulary and grammar.  It is available online here.

The main problem is, if we just teach and learn new words as they come up, we find that these words give back less and less.  The first words we learn give great text coverage, but as we learn more words, the return reduces as they are less common.

At more advanced levels, collocations and language chunks become much more prominent.  The same words appear in more and different combinations. Register, connotation and style become more important.  There is more specialised vocabulary and subtle, evaluative nuances of adjectives, for example, need to be explained.  There is also a growth in domain-specificity - vocabulary particular to specific disciplines.

There is evidence of possible slowdown and attrition at higher levels, too. The pace of learning slows and students may even reach a plateau and stop developing completely.

The English Vocabulary Profile gives labels for words and phrases and can be browsed by CEFR level or by the vocabulary item itself.  This helps teachers to know what vocabulary is most useful for students to learn at a particular level. It also gives students a progression if they focus on the words they need to know at each level.

Grammatical issues

At higher levels we can focus on:

• New or not typically taught functions for known forms.  For example, we can teach the uses of present perfect that we haven't had time to cover at lower levels.
• Low-frequency patterns - structures that are still used by native or proficient speakers, but not often.
• Patterns that underlie academic success - grammatical structures that help students to score well in exams.

Example - Future Perfect (Continuous)

The common usage which we teach at intermediate level is - At the end of this year, I will have been living in Vietnam for three years.  However, if we look at corpus, we can find another common use for this tense:

You'll have heard about the terrible earthquake.

You'll have been given a handout.

Here, future perfect is used to make assumptions about the present - things that have already happened!

Look at these examples from the corpus of present perfect continuous being used in the same way:

At higher levels, we should find and teach examples like this.  We need to show our students different functions of grammar which is already known. They will be able to use them in their speaking and writing, and recognise the meaning when they hear or read them.

Example - Subjunctive Patterns

Here, we are talking about instances where the verb is always in the base form.  For example,

They insist that he wear his uniform at all times.

......their insistence that he wear his uniform ......

......is important that he wear his uniform .......

verb/noun/adjective + that + subject + base form of the verb

We can look at a corpus and see how the subjunctive is used.  Although it's not so common, it's useful and students think they're making progress when they learn about it.

Look at these examples taken from English Profile:

We can teach these structures as a piece of grammar and link it with vocabulary by using English Profile.

The power of the corpus is that it can give coherence and purpose to syllabi at higher levels.

Example - Nominalisation

Here, we are talking about the process of turning a verb into a noun.  

We fly at seven.    >        Our flight is at seven. 

Mr X donated Y.    >        Mr X made a donation of Y.

It is seen as a sign of good academic writing.  This can be confirmed by looking at the Cambridge Learner Corpus which takes examples from students' work and researches what grammar structures and vocabulary attract the highest marks.

Example - Modality

Analysis of success at higher levels indicates that the use of adverbs after modal verbs is good!

Conclusion

The corpus is relevant and current - results from it can be put straight into teaching materials.

Ask:

• What is it that remains to be learned at higher levels?
• How can the corpus help us to decide what must be taught and how to teach it?

Students can't learn every word in the English language, so tell them to concentrate on the words that interest them.  By reading texts that interest them, their general vocabulary will improve and they will make progress - FACT!!

Integrating new teachers into an experienced staffroom

This was the title of the fifth in a series of monthly CPD webinars hosted by the British Council.  You can read more about the programme here.

This webinar was presented by Fiona Dunlop and what follows is a summary of what she had to say.

What are the reasons for hiring inexperienced teachers?

• they are generally enthusiastic and dynamic
• to bring new blood to a stale staffroom
• they often have new ideas
• to develop/invest in them
• they have no bad habits
• more experienced teachers may not be available
• they will often accept short-term contracts
• it's cost effective
• they are local
• for emergency cover

Challenges and drawbacks

• inexperienced teachers often have unrealistic time and preparation management
• they can be overwhelmed by a full timetable
• they may be unable to manage admin demands
• they could have a lack of language awareness
• you may be limited as to which courses they can teach
• the pace of their lessons is often too slow - they are thorough, but tend to pitch to the lower end of the group
• they may have a lack of cultural awareness
• they may not be comfortable with firm classroom management and have problems dealing with difficult students
• there may be a desire to be the students' friend
• they may be compared to previous teachers
• they may not gain the students' respect
• they don't have a bank of ideas at their fingertips which allows them to think on their feet
• they may not be accepted in the staffroom by more experienced teachers
• they may get stressed and be unwilling to say they are struggling

Things which are important to remember

• New teachers are clients of the school and first impressions count - from the first contact, the experience should be as positive and stress-free as possible.
• You should compare the new teacher's experience to the student's journey.
• Remember your own first day in a new school - remind yourself how it feels to be 'the new kid on the block'.
• Treat new teachers as 'internal customers'.  If you treat them well, then they will look after the school's 'external customers' - the students.
• The staffroom will be energised by the input of a new ideas.  This is the time for more experienced teachers to shine.
• Your students will benefit from having new staff and the school's reputation will be enhanced.
• Treating new teachers well also enhances the reputation of the industry.  ELT gets a lot of bad press - it is often seen as a 'stop-gap' before people move in to a 'proper' profession.

Induction for new teachers

A good induction process is vital.  It should be ongoing and it should be revisited.  Here are some of the induction ideas used by Fiona in her role as DoS of the Wimbledon School of English:

Before the contract starts:

• Arrange a meeting time with the new teacher.
• Prepare or e-mail induction documents and other necessary policies.  Include a copy of the student handbook and/or school brochure.
• Check all materials and class handover notes are ready.
• Arrange a mentor for the new teacher.
• Organise a desk and/or locker for him or her.

First day/week

• Have a copy of the induction checklist for you to talk through.
• Talk through each point on the checklist, allowing time for questions as you go.
• Take the new teacher on a tour of the school, including the classrooms where they will be teaching.  Remember to point out fire exits.
• Show them around the teachers' room and explain where to find everything.
• Introduce them to all staff members by name and job.
• Provide preparation time.
• Be available to help where needed.

First week or two of teaching

• Check lesson plans regularly - even experienced teachers take a while to settle into a new house style.
• Arrange an informal observation of the new teacher.
• Arrange for the new teacher to observe their peers.
• Give observation feedback and do post-induction - this might include a quiz about your institution.
• Go through the induction checklist again to check for any problems.
• Arrange the first formal observation to be done by the end of the third teaching week.

Ongoing

• Record stages on induction spreadsheet.
• Do formal observation and follow-up.
• Check plans of work and admin.
• Check with the new teacher's mentor.

Developmental opportunities for new teachers

• Don't overwhelm new teachers - give them small, practical pieces of information.
• Development should happen naturally when checking lesson plans and just by being around the office.
• Give short practical workshops and try to grade the training and development according to the teacher's level.
• Do observations and give constructive feedback.
• Use the British Council CPD handbook.

Developmental observation types

These need to be timetabled in to a new teacher's schedule.

• Unobserved/blind - plan a detailed lesson (time the planning to avoid over-planning), run through it with the manager, teach the lesson, have a follow-up meeting with the manager to encourage reflective practice.
• Filmed/recorded - these should be structured.  It's useful to record the students, not the teacher.  It gives a great insight into how a lesson is being received.  Recording is also the best way to make new teachers aware of their TTT.
• Peer
• 10 minute - these should be incorporated into the induction programme.
• Mentor feedback
• Short burst/repeated theme

You can find more detailed descriptions of observation types here.

Quality assurance observations

These are necessary to the successful running of any school/department and there should be clear, practical policies and procedures set out, including the name of the person who is going to carry them out.

It's important not to over-observe!!

What to look for when doing a QA observation:

• Preparation
• Presentation
• Pitch
• Pace
• Staging
• Achievement of aims
• Subject matter
• Error correction
• Variety
• Rapport
• Pronunciation work
• Use of aids
• Classroom management
• Flexibility
• Learner training

British Council CPD Framework

Use the website - englishagenda.britishcouncil.org

It has:

• a handbook for managers
• a handbook for teachers
• a framework for CPD
• a portal with advice, suggestions and video clips

Give a copy of the CPD handbook to new teachers during induction.  It can be used by mentors and teachers together.

Hints for the manager

• Make sure the induction process is ongoing.
• Induction should be for everyone regardless of why or for how long they are in the school.
• Use an induction checklist to make sure nothing gets forgotten.
• Provide clear guidelines for mentors.
• Compile FAQs and example scenarios to talk through at induction.
• Give hints on lesson preparation and provide sample plans - provide time limit guidelines and give teachers the opportunity to prepare together.
• Provide a bank of last minute lessons and ideas in the teachers' room.
• Run regular ideas swapshops - immediate and practical.
• Introduce everyone to each other!  Provide a board with teachers' profiles and photos and a 'come to me for.....' section.
• Don't assume anything!
• Provide a survival checklist of admin jobs for the first day/week/month.
• Arrange 10 minute meetings every Friday with the DoS if possible.

Conclusion

• Clear systems will set the foundations.
• Notice the positives new teachers can bring.
• Remember your first experiences.
• Retention of staff is good for your school!

Five Communicative Language Learning Activities

This was the title of a recent Cambridge English Teacher webinar given by Peter Lucantoni.  What follows is a summary of what he had to say including descriptions of his five suggested activities.

Communicative Language Learning (CLL)

• CLL seeks to bring students beyond grammatical competence.
• Students need to decode language and manipulate it in private dialogue.
• This leads to communicative competence.

 

We need to move from knowing the forms and structures to using them in practice.

 

Some activities:

 

1. From letters to grammar

Students must listen to a series of letters and then think of a meaningful phrase which uses each letter as the first letter of a word.  The order in which they use the letters is not important.

For example, given -  A D I F , students might produce:

• A day in France
• Fantastic dreams are incredible
• I ate David's fruit

Students think of the vocabulary first and then the grammar they need to make a phrase.  It becomes easier for students as they do more examples.

 

You can make this activity more challenging by telling the students that one of the words needs to be something specific - an adjective, an adverb, a pronoun or an irregular verb, if you are focusing on grammar, for example.  If the emphasis is on lexis, you could ask that one of the words be a colour or a family member, for example.

 

As an extension, you could put students in groups and allow them to choose four letters which they then exchange with another group to make phrases. This is a good warmer or filler activity to reinforce grammar or vocabulary.  It encourages creativity - students could make silly sentences, for example - as long as they are grammatically correct.  It can be used with all levels. Generally, students like the element of competition involved.

2.  Numbers and sizes ratios

(From 'Grammar Activity Book' published by CUP)

This activity focusses on general knowledge and guessing numbers and size.  Learners then have the chance to produce their own version of the activity.

• Put learners into groups of 2 or 3
• Learners look at comparisons on the board or in a handout and discuss how big the difference is between them
• They then match the comparison to a ratio
• Then they write a sentence expressing the ratio

For example:
The world's tallest man is 2.5m tall.
The world's shortest man is 0.5m tall.
The ratio is 1 : 5.
The world's tallest man is five times as tall as the world's shortest man.

or:

The age of the Egyptian pyramids v the age of the Aztec pyramids - 1 : 2.
Aztec pyramids are twice as old as Egyptian pyramids.

or:

Number of rows on a chess board v number of squares - 1 : 8.
There are eight times as many squares on a chessboard as rows.

Other examples you could give:

• Number of circles on the Olympic flag / number of circles on the Japanese flag
• Paris, distance from London / Athens, distance from London
• World's highest mountain / world's highest waterfall
• Population of London / population of Mexico City
• Number of countries bordering Spain / number of countries bordering the USA
• one mile / sixteen kilometres

Students will need to research the answers using websites in English.  They can also do further research and compile their own ratios which they then exchange with classmates to write further sentences.

The purpose of this activity is to get learners to think logically and critically, to use their general knowledge and to practise comparative forms.

3.  Question to question

Sometimes we answer one question with another question, rather than giving a direct answer.  Why do we do this?

• for clarification
• because we don't know the answer
• to show interest
• to stall

Common questions we might use:

• I'm sorry, what did you say?
• Really?
• What do you mean?
• Could you repeat that?
• Why do you ask?
• Don't you believe me?

Give students a jumbled dialogue like this:

and get them to put it into the correct order:

Then get students to create their own dialogues having given them the functional language they need.  First they need to think of a context or situation (for example, parent/child, husband/wife), then write the dialogue, then read it aloud or act it out for their classmates to guess the context or situation.



The purpose of this activity is to teach functional language, to practise intonation and question forms, as a confidence booster, and to have fun!

4.  Alphabet dialogue

Students create a paired dialogue so that each line begins with the next letter of the alphabet.  e.g.:

• Ahmed, how are you?
• Bad, really bad!
• Come on, it can't be that bad!
• Do you think I'm joking?
• Everyone knows you're a joker.

Stick to four or five line dialogues and start with random letters of the alphabet (perhaps drawn from a hat).

For higher level students, you could combine 'alphabet dialogue' with 'question to question'.

The purpose of this activity is as a warmer, a confidence booster, to practise real time speaking using colloquial language, and to practise sentence starters.

5.  Sloobie

In this activity, learners look at a text which contains nonsense words and try to make sense of it from a grammatical perspective.  It is good for helping students with their 'decoding' skills and gives great opportunities for creative language use.


An example of a nonsense text:

Students need to identify parts of speech by looking at the word order.  For example, 'brumpting' and 'ticfrous' must be adjectives.

 

You can ask students to speculate on meaning by asking questions such as:

• What is a sloobie?
• What does it do?

They can then discuss and justify their answers in groups.  Alternatively, for lower level students, you can give the students the words they have to substitute into the text:

You can get students to create their own 'sloobie' for their classmates to solve by writing real sentences and then substituting some of the words for nonsense words.

 

The purpose of this activity is to practise guessing meaning from context, to identify parts of speech and to be creative.





It's important to model all of these activities well and to give students the functional language they will need to complete them.

 

 

Practical guidance on training students to cope with authentic spoken English

This was the title of a recent British Council Teaching English seminar presented by Sheila Thorn and what follows is a summary of what she had to say.




Sheila began with a question:

Why are listening comprehension exercises in coursebooks not representative of informal spoken English heard outside the classroom?

• They are scripted - usually because coursebook writers are trying to introduce a language point.
• They are outdated - language changes so quickly.
• The speed of delivery is artificially slow.
• Turn-taking - in authentic speech, people talk over each other all the time.  It's normal!  In coursebook listenings, everyone takes turns nicely!
• There's a lack of hesitation.  Generally, there are no pauses, no fillers, and everyone speaks in full, accurate sentences.
• The accent - coursebook listenings are usually delivered in standard English.  There isn't a range of accents.
• They are recorded in sound studios, so there is no background noise.
• The people speaking are often actors, so are not as natural as people off the street would be.
• They rarely use non-native speakers of English.
• Listening in coursebooks is mainly for modelling purposes so students hear clear examples of structures and vocabulary.

A quote from Michael Rost:

 

'There is a distinction between learning to listen in the L2 and learning the L2 through listening.'

 

Coursebooks are all about learning a language through listening, but it is better to learn to listen in an L2 as a specific skill.

 

Critique of the traditional listening comprehension approach

1. It's non-communicative.
2. It's teacher centred.

• A lot of listening comprehension is testing, not training.  You're seeing how much students understand, but you're not training them to listen any more effectively.
• It's negative reinforcement.  It's always the same students who get things right and the same students who get things wrong.  Students start to feel that they're just rubbish at listening and it's difficult to break through that.
• It's boring!  Just listen and answer questions - boring!!  The texts are bland; nobody dies, nobody's on drugs!
• Listening is intangible.  Unless you've got the tapescript, it's just in the air - you can't grab hold of it.  Therefore, it's difficult for the teacher to work out why a student found it difficult.  Even when students get the right answer, the teacher doesn't know if they got there for the right reasons.
• The focus in traditional listenings is on the product - the things that were said, not how they were said.  It's better to focus on the process of listening rather than the product.
• It's over-reliant on top-down processing.  Telling students just to listen to the main words doesn't really help because those small words give meaning about time, aspect, etc.
• Just exposing students to more listening doesn't really help, either.  They won't just pick it up through osmosis!

The challenges of spontaneous speech

 

Spontaneous speech is easy for us as native speakers.  It's automatic.  For language learners, though, it's rather more difficult.  As Gillian Brown says:

 

'Every consonant and every vowel will be affected by its neighbouring consonants and vowels and by the rhythmic structure in which it occurs.'

 

You don't get dictionary-like, carefully articulated words in a stream of speech.  Something happens to them.  Ellision causes problems for listeners.

 

Some solutions to the problem

• Use short, authentic listenings on a regular basis.
• Practise listening for word recognition - can students hear individual words in a stream of speech?
• Do lots of de-coding practice.
• Do intensive listening activities on short pieces, rather than extensive listening (traditional listening comprehension) on longer pieces.
• Even tracks just a few seconds in length can generate a lot of language activities.
• With both word recognition and de-coding, follow the communicative approach.  Get students in pairs or small groups to work collaboratively on authentic recordings.

Gapping

 

Gapping key lexical/content words in a stream of speech is highly effective. 

• Can students recognise words that you know they already know in a stream of speech?
• Can they recognise functional or grammatical words?  For example, even if they don't hear the ending of a word, can they work it out from context?  For instance, 'She promised to help her with her homework.'  Do students know from context that they need to put the 'd' ending on 'promise' even if they can't hear it?
• By gapping contractions, we can make students aware of how often they feature in natural speech.
• We can use gapping to practise real life minimal pair discrimination.
• We can gap unknown words whose sounds conform to spelling conventions.

Dictation

• We can dictate short authentic extracts and compare the citation form of a word with how that word sounds in a stream of speech.
• We can use instant dictation, as advocated by John Field.  Lots of listening comprehension tests a student's memory.  We are asking them if they can remember what they heard.  In fact, when we're listening, the last ten or so words are still in our active brains - they haven't been processed yet, they are still easily accessible.  So, with instant dictation, play an authentic listening, pause it at random and ask students to write down what they think the last four or five words were that they heard.  This way, we can see how effectively students are listening and they will improve with practice.

Free-style

• Take an authentic listening into class.
• Don't give any set-up or ask any questions.
• Play the listening.
• Ask students - 'How much did you understand?'
• Get them to give you a percentage.  (These percentages should be recorded by the students and used to show their progress over time.)
• Get them to tell you what they think they understood.
• Be non-committal.
• Write the points up on the board.
• Play the listening again.
• Ask students to write down all the words they heard which they think were important.
• Get students in pairs or small groups to construct meaning from the ideas and the word lists.
• Play the listening again and give feedback on how close they were to understanding the meaning.

 

 

 

 

You could go on to a traditional comprehension exercise if you like, but this kind of activity reflects what happens in authentic listening.

Observation and your teaching staff

This was the title of the fourth in a series of monthly CPD webinars hosted by the British Council.  You can read more about the programme here.

This webinar was presented by Gillian Davidson and what follows is a summary of what she had to say.




Observations - the traditional view

Observations are often seen mainly as a quality assurance/quality control tool used for performance management, sometimes in response to student complaints.  They are usually done twice a year and teachers dread them!  They are seen as a negative, or simply a 'tick-box' exercise.

Teacher objections

• Teachers might wonder, 'What right do you have to observe me?'
• Observations are seen as judgemental.
• They are seen as an intrusion into the teacher's space.

We need to break this vision.  The classroom is the domain of the students, not the teacher.  Everything we do should be to enhance the learning for the students.  It should not be primarily for the benefit of the teacher or the observer.

As observers, we should be reacting to and commenting on the effect of the activity on the learning of the students, not on the activity itself.

Tools and Rules

Observation types

• Management - used to check performance and maintain quality.  These can be done formally at a pre-determined time or as drop-in observations for 10 - 30 minutes at a time.  In a good school, QA/management observations can be developmental as well.  They just need to be kept separate from performance management observations which are done in response to a complaint or identified problem.  In these cases, teachers need to be told that it is a performance management issue.
• Peer - a really effective tool.  Teachers learn most from observing, and being observed by, their colleagues.
• Self - this should happen after every lesson in the form of reflective practice.
• Blind - observations done with a mentor's support.

Advantages and disadvantages of each type

 Observation sheets

Using observation sheets gives focus to the observation and makes it objective.  Before choosing an observation sheet, ask yourself what kind of teacher you're observing and why you're doing it.

Here is an example of a section of an observation sheet:

Using such sheets gives a detailed overview of your teachers and keeps feedback objective and non-judgemental.  It's a good place to start with a development plan and is particularly good for new teachers.

More experienced teachers who already have a development plan can choose a specific area that they would like feedback on.  Look at this example of part of an observation sheet for commenting on teaching lexis:

With more experienced teachers, then, we may need to focus on the detail of a lesson (lexis, a particular grammar point, the use of an IWB, etc.) and will therefore need different observation sheets for different purposes.

Rules

Here are some rules for making observations developmental:

• Make time - it's so easy to put off doing observations and reduce the time you give to teachers.  You must make time.  Put observations, feedback sessions and follow-up sessions in your diary.  Every time you do an observation, you're saying 'teaching is important'.
• Give warning
• Be objective - if more than one person is responsible for doing observations, it's important that you are all observing on the same criteria.
• Behave appropriately during observations -

1. stay quiet.
2. don't pull faces.
3. take notes, but pay attention to the lesson.
4. don't interfere.
5. don't take part in the lesson.
6. use an observation sheet to help you focus.
7. focus on the learning - what you like and don't like is irrelevant.  All that matters is whether the students like it and whether they are learning.  You are not watching the teacher as a person, but as how the teacher is affecting the learner.

• Feedback promptly - choose your language carefully during feedback.  Be as objective as possible.  Don't use 'I liked.....', 'I felt that.....', etc.  Instead, use 'I saw....', 'You did....', etc..
• Follow-up - the feedback should always include ideas and suggestions, things to do, an action plan.  So, the follow-up is very important - it is what makes an observation developmental.  The teacher needs to write something about what they did and how it worked out and then he needs to sit down and discuss it with the observer.
• Value the process!! - Don't let observations be a 'tick-box' exercise.

Giving feedback

• Make it useful - it's no good to say, 'yes, it's fine'. 
• Make it balanced - teachers can only take so much criticism at any one time.
• Make it reflective - reflection is one of the most difficult things to do and teachers need to be trained not to look at the lesson as a whole, but to break it down.
• In written feedback, use 'you', rather than 'the teacher' or 'Susan'!!
• Agree a development plan.
• Keep records.
• Follow-up.

The Observation Process

 

 

 

The 'orror of herrors - a webinar summary

What follows is a summary of a recent webinar on errors and error correction by Robin Walker.

Causes - the origin of learner errors

1. Carelessness
2. Mother tongue interference - for example, a Spanish learner might say 'John is ill since four days' as a direct translation from his native language.  A Vietnamese learner is likely to omit the verb 'to be': for example, 'I tired'.
3. Teaching materials/methods used - these can force students to make errors.  For example, 'She told she was on holiday.'  This confusion between say and tell could be a result of the way it was taught.
4. Overgeneralisation - students may over-use the rules they've learned.  For example, the insistence on third person s can lead to errors such as, 'She must goes soon'.
5. General order of difficulty
6. Risk-taking/creativity - the more creative a student is, the more errors he will make.

Correcting students' written errors

As teachers, we are far too ready to put a red pen through something.  In reality, we can't second guess our students and it is presumptuous of us to correct their writing to what we think they were trying to say.  Look at this example of a student's writing:

• Festival, we'll have hake with crap sauce. - Here the teacher might be tempted to correct so that it reads, 'At the festival, we'll have hake with crab sauce'.   The correction of 'crap' to 'crab' is a fairly safe assumption and it was, indeed, what the student meant.  However, on questioning him, the teacher discovered that what he wanted to say was, 'First of all, we'll have hake with crab sauce'!

We feel so duty-bound to correct that we over-correct, but any error correction is ineffectual if we don't know for sure what the student wanted to say or what caused the error.  

It's a good idea to use a writing error correction code to encourage students to self-correct.  This is the one we use in my institution:

Writing correction code from Andrea Wade

Whichever code we use, we must remember to use the ? more!!  If we're not sure what the student meant, then we need to simply use a ? and ask our student to explain what they were trying to say.

Classifying errors

What can we gain from classifying errors?  Well, it certainly helps to concentrate our minds.  We could, for example, consider two types of error:

LOCAL - e.g. 'They fly to all of the countrys in that area.' - We can ignore local errors.

GLOBAL - e.g. 'What to have abridgement about of the what I did last week.' - These errors impede comprehension.  We should put a ? and go back to question the student.

This scheme of two types of errors doesn't work, though - it's not sophisticated enough.

Here's an alternative:

This is the scheme to have in your head when you're monitoring around the class or when you're marking writing.

Correction methods

a)  Repeating the error

b)  Writing the correct version above the error

c)  Using error codes to indicate the type of error

d)  Reformulation/recasting

e)  Using some sort of gesture to show where the error is

f)  Leaving a slip of paper with the error written on it

g)  Making a note of errors and treating them later

h)  Treating common errors at the end of the class

i)  Limiting correction to certain types of error

j)  Ignoring the error

	On the spot	Later
Oral	a)  d)  e)  i)  j)	f)  g)  h)  i)  j)
Written	Don’t do this because students can correct their own work later!	b)  c)  g)  h)  i)  j)

Strategies to use in the classroom

 

1.  Laugh at mistakes

• Don't laugh at students, but laugh at mistakes together!

2.  Have it back!

• Give work back without correcting anything.
• Ask for a re-write before marking anything.

3.  Peer correction

• Students choose a classmate to check their work before they hand it in to the teacher.
• The person checking the work signs it.
• This makes all the students think carefully about mistakes.

4.  Four pen dictation

• The teacher chooses a 150-word text from a previous unit and dictates it to the class.
• The student writes what he hears in pencil.
• When finished, the student checks his writing for mistakes and marks them in blue.
• The student then passes his paper to a partner who corrects any further mistakes he finds in green.
• The teacher then corrects in red, or, alternatively, puts the accurate text on the board for students to correct themselves.

5.  Error auction

• Put the students in teams and give them 'money' to buy correct sentences.
• Use sentences containing the students own mistakes.
• Which team 'bought' the most correct sentences?

6.  Error maze

• I wrote about this in an earlier post on communicative learner-centred grammar.

7.  Error lists

• Students make lists of their repeated errors so that they become more conscious of them.

8.  Flavour of the month

• Errors that are really irritating to the teacher are displayed on a poster in the classroom.

9.  Error evaluation

Students categorise their own mistakes as follows:

• A mistake I'm always making and it really irritates me!
• A mistake I made this time that I thought I'd stopped making.
• A mistake that I've not made before, but I know how to correct it.  (Great!  Congratulations!)
• A mistake that I haven't made before and I don't know how to correct it.  (Tell them - it might be from a future lesson.)

Final thought

The three Cs - CCC

Charity - learning implies making errors

Care - as to when and how to correct

Confidence - learner attitude is key