buzz words and best practice sbs
TRANSCRIPT
Buzzwords and
Best Practice in ELT
Julio Menochelli
Some key concepts / buzz words
Best practice
Motivation
Best Practice
How would you define best practice?
What does it involve?
When / where have you come across the term?
Best Practice
“A best practice is a technique or methodology that, through experience and research, has proven to reliably lead to a desired result. The term is used frequently in the fields of health care, government administration, the education system, project management…” www.searchvb.com
Best Practice in ELT
“The concept of Best Practice allows: essential standards (for example, in relation to „quality‟ of teaching staff and resources) and (occasionally) Key benchmarks (for example, minimum test scores and skills acquisition requirements) to be set.”
Alison Spice
Best Practice
What factors might prevent the adoption of „best practices‟?
Best Practice
“According to the American Productivity & Quality Center, the three main barriers to adoption of a best practice are a lack of knowledge about current best practices, a lack of motivation to make changes involved in their adoption, and a lack of knowledge and skills required to do so.” www.searchvb.com
What works in practice?
In groups make a list of 5 teaching techniques or activity types that you feel are reliably effective in your classrooms.
Buzzwords
Motivation
“Motivation is what drives learners to achieve a goal, and is a key factor determining success or failure in language learning.”
An A – Z of ELT
Motivation
What are the key factors that contribute to your learners‟ motivation?
Motivation
Use of Technology (Blended Learning)
Definition of Blended Learning
“Blended learning refers to a language course which combines a face to face classroom component with an appropriate use of technology”.
Sharma & Barrett 2007
Wikis
www.taggalaxy.de
www.freerice.com
http://www.britishcouncil.org/kids-stories-red-riding-hood.htm
„Technology will notreplace teachers. Teacherswho use technology willprobably replace thosewho do not.‟Ray Clifford
Group dynamics
What practical things do you do to foster positive group dynamics in with your learners?
Ways that a teacher can promote a
positive group dynamic include:
Ensuring all class members know each other‟s names
Using „ice-breaking‟ activities to encourage interaction, laughter, and relaxation
Personalizing tasks, i.e.. Setting tasks that involve sharing of personal experiences and opinions
An A – Z of ELT
Learner-centeredness
“Learner-centred instruction is true to the spirit of progressive education, including the movement towards providing learners with greater autonomy… Learner-centredness also describes ways of organizing classroom interaction so that the focus is directed away from the teacher, and onto the learners who perform tasks in pairs or small groups.”
An A – Z of ELT
Learner-centeredness
What things do you do / not do to make your classroom more learner-centered?
Personaliation
“When you personalize language you use it to talk about knowledge, experience and feelings… The influence of humanistic approaches has given a fresh impetus to personalization, both in terms of providing a more coherent rationale and suggesting a broader range of activity types.”
An A – Z of ELT
Personalization
“For a start (it is argued), personalization creates better classroom dynamics…. And the mental and emotional effort that is involved in finding personal associations is likely to make that item more memorable… Finally, lessons are likely to be more interesting, and hence more motivating, if at least some of the content concerns the people in the room, rather than the characters in the coursebooks.”
An A – Z of ELT
Personalization
In what ways do you personalize language learning with your students?
What is their reaction to this?
A personal lead in to a topic
Pre-int. & Intermediate TBs
Speaking
“Speaking is generally thought to be the most important of the four skills… One of the main difficulties, of course, is that speaking normally takes place spontaneously and in real time, which means that planning and production overlap. If too much attention is paid to planning production suffers, and the effect is a loss of fluency.
Speaking
“On the other hand, if the speaker‟s attention is directed solely on production, it is likely that accuracy will suffer, which could prejudice intelligibility. In order to free up attention, therefore, the speaker need to have achieved a degree of automaticity in both planning and production.”
An A – Z of ELT
Speaking
Which of the speaking activities that you use regularly focus on accuracy?
Which focus on fluency?
Fluency
“Research into listeners‟ perceptions of fluency suggests fluency is primarily the ability to produce and maintain speech in real time. To do this, fluent speakers are capable of:
Appropriate pausing…
Long turns
An A – Z of ELT
Fluency
“All of the above factors depend on the speaker having a well-developed grammar, an extensive vocabulary, and, crucially, a store of memorized chunks. Being able to draw on this store of chunks means not having to depend on grammar to construct each utterance from scratch.”
An A – Z of ELT
Fluency
What kind of speaking activities tend to get your students speaking freely?
Can you think of any speaking activities that can help learners build up a „store of chucks‟ of language that they can draw on in real life speaking contexts?
Speaking & fluency
Encourage students to draw on their own experiences when speaking.
Use brainstorming activities as the basis of introductory speaking activities.
Give speaking activities a realistic, grounded context that the learners can relate to.
Focus on speaking activities that will be useful to learners in the real world.
Encourage learners to be open with each other and open up to them too.
Anecdotes
“Teachers often ask students for a personal response to something … These are usually short exchanges… An anecdote activity on the other hand is an extended speaking activity which provides an opportunity for students to tackle a longer piece of discourse and develop their speaking skills.”
Sue Kay, 2001
Example anecdote
New Inside Out ElementaryStudent‟s Book
How do anecdote activities work?
Topics that are familiar to the students are covered.
A model is given as a pre-task listening activity.
Question prompts are given to aid preparation.
Students are given preparation time - this increases accuracy and fluency.
How do anecdote activities work?
Students choose what they talk about from the question prompts.
The tasks are done in pairs so they are not face-threatening.
Tasks involve sufficient linguistic challenge / complexity – this ensures progress of students‟ understanding of the language.
Students may be given opportunities to repeat the task – this further enhances accuracy and fluency.
Let’s try one …
Think about a friend who is different from you.
Close your eyes and listen to the questions.
Think about your friend.
Intermediate SB
Successful anecdotes: Tip 1
Try reading the prompt questions to students, as a closed book activity, to get them to recall their memories – guided visualization.
Successful anecdotes: Tip 2
Train students in strategies for showing interest in their partner‟s story.This helps the partner and is a very useful conversation skill to develop too.
Interjections
“Really?” “That‟s interesting” “Wow” etc
Successful anecdotes: Tip 3
If students „dry up‟ during a ananecdote task encourage their partner to help them by asking on of the prompt questions from the book or a follow on question of their own.
Successful anecdotes: Tip 4
Train students to use follow on
questions
“When did it happen?”
“Who were you with?”
“Why didn‟t you…?”
“Where were you when…?”
“How did you manage to…?”
Successful anecdotes: Tip 5
Teach students conventions of
turn-taking so that they can signal
when they have finished their story
and their partner can take their turn.
“How about you?”
“What about you?”
“Tell me about…”
Successful anecdotes: Tip 6
Encourage students to give each other feedback on their performance.
Then get students to repeat the anecdote with another partner.
References
Scott Thornbury, 2006 “An A – Z of ELT”
Sue Kay, 2001 “Anecdote activities” In English Teaching professional (Issue 19)
Ron Walker, 2004, “Good ELT practice” IATEFL Issues issue 181
Alison Spice, 1999, “Best Practice in pre-departure language training”
Michigan Foreign Language Association, 2004, “The Definition of Best Practice for the Student Teaching Experience”
Sue Kay and Vaughan Jones, “New Inside Out”
