Methodology Week 8 Reading Questions

Harmer, 18, Listening

1. Maybe another name for type 1 and type 2 tasks should be top-down and bottom-up tasks. A type 1 task involves listening or skim reading to get the gist of a text whether written or aural. A type 2 task on the other hand requires that specific information be extracted by methods such as detailed comprehension, text interpretation or language analysis.

1a. Harmer states that the warm-up or introduction section of a listening activity, where the teacher prepares the ground or in some way sets the stage for what the students are about to hear, is vitally important. It is at this point that the teacher can activate the students’ schemata and provide contextual information. He goes on to quote a study by Chang and Read which found ‘that giving students background knowledge before they listened was more successful than either letting them preview questions or teaching them some key vocabulary before they listened.’ Harmer mentions one caveat in connection with this – students are likely to benefit more from lots of listening than they are to a little listening that has been thoroughly pre-explained. I.e. don’t overdo the introduction.

2. The only one I haven’t tried is the ‘interview’. However, I am including ‘conversations’ amongst the activities I’ve tried in class because I’m assuming it includes modelling dialogue in a conversation with my co-teachers. I am happy to have modelling conversations with 3 of my 5 co-teachers. Of the two I don’t do this with one is not a great English speaker and I don’t want to embarrass her and the other is determinedly not interested in this kind of co-teaching.

I specifically read aloud every second week to my grade 3 classes. Every second week I have to teach a listening activity from the textbook which necessarily involves me reading aloud at some point. It is relatively successful but I think lots of students don’t pay attention. I think only the good students really listen. This is partly my fault due to how I structure and introduce the listening activity. I will experiment with changes having now read Harmer and Brown.

‘Story-Telling’ is something I have specifically done on two occasions. The first time was for winter camp. I thought one day could be a story-telling day. The students were less than enthralled. At camp I learned the students just want to do fun activities and I suspect my story-telling lesson was not exciting enough for them. I gave the same lesson in a different context to my grade 3 students one week and it actually went really well. Looking back I don’t know why I haven’t tried it again. I have the actual lesson and will bring it to class on Saturday. I actually found the lesson online in a free downloadable book of listening activities. Looking at it again in the context of the Brown and Harmer reading I realise that whoever made it knew what they were doing as it is really well put together. Furthermore, my co-teacher thought it was a great lesson. If anyone wants a copy of the book let me know and I’ll email it to you.

3. I use video fairly regularly for a variety of different purposes. Of relevance here is the video I use during listening activity lessons for the grade 3 classes. Each activity consists of a 1 minute video depicting a conversation between 2 young people on a topic related to the textbook chapter’s theme. Cleary the makers have aimed to reproduce authentic conversations but they are staged in such a blatant and obvious fashion that most of my students think they are hilarious. It is difficult to take the speakers seriously. There are normally 2-4 different activities associated with each video – say which sentences are true and which are false, choose the picture that relates to the dialogue, fill in the missing words etc. These are easy lessons to teach but again, having done this reading on listening activities, I can probably make them better. It annoys me to note that I thought that I had thought about these lessons and now realise I haven’t thought about them enough.

I also use video for ‘Last One Standing’ games. This is a really great bodily kinaesthetic listening activity. It is nearly always a hit with my students and is a really great warm-up activity.

I also tried playing pop songs and giving students the lyrics with some words missing. They listen to the song and fill in the words. I stopped this because it was time consuming, unproductive and killed the momentum of my classes.

The ideas on 309-310 are all interesting and possible to a greater or lesser extent. However, ‘Partial Viewing’ sounds like the one I would be least interested in trying. It is too fiddly for my taste. I would really like to try ‘Picture or Speech’. I have read about lessons like this before and wanted to try it but have always been put off by the logistics of moving chairs etc. Maybe reading this will provide the impetus for me to try it.

4. I’m not sure I have an order I’d like to try them in but I have some thoughts on each –

Example 1 – Honestly, I can’t really be bothered arranging for someone to come into the classroom to be interviewed. That sounds terrible but it is the unvarnished truth.

Example 2 – I did this activity once before, during winter camp, and the students really liked it. I framed it as a competition between 3 teams. I would definitely do it again. I’ve never really thought about it before but I use lots of lots of things in camp classes I don’t use in normal classes. This could easily be used in a normal class. I should have thought of it before. And it wasn’t a recording the students were treated to it was my dulcet tones.

Example 3 – If I’m being honest I could not be bothered with this activity because I don’t want to record anything myself. I just don’t want to have to deal with the technology or deal with corralling a co-teacher to help me. Modelling in class is fine but recording before class is not going to happen.

Example 4 – This seems okay. Assuming I had the audio track I would try this one out. This is similar to the listening activities I give my grade 3 classes.

Example 5 – I don’t think I would use this because the language and concepts are too sophisticated. I think it would be too time consuming and difficult to explain.

Example 6 – I would happily try this too. It is actually similar to the ‘Last One Standing’ activities I use except it involves a book instead of a song.

Example 7 – I like this one – it’s simple, interesting and compelling. I would try this.

Example 8 – I don’t think this sounds like an activity for ‘lower intermediate’ at all. The concept is too abstract and shapeless for me. Maybe I’m being lazy but it doesn’t immediately appeal.

5. All these questions relate to intensive reading. However, the section on extensive reading is very interesting. I attended a lecture about extensive reading at the conference and I might try and set up an extensive reading club at my school. I found some really interesting sources and websites for this kind of thing.

Other than that I’m always disappointed when I read these things because doing so always reveals how limited my earlier thinking has been. I’ve been giving listening activity lessons to my grade 3 students for weeks now and I could be doing it so much better. For instance I never really give a contextual introduction or consider that everyone listens at a different speed. I never differentiate between type 1 and 2 activities. I could probably use more ‘reading aloud’ activities. I’ve been oblivious to the idea of paralinguistic behaviour. All of these ideas constitute useful and applicable knowledge.

Lesson Report, Monday 17th, October 2011

This is the follow up to - Lesson Report, Wednesday 12th October 2011.

I taught this lesson for the first time on Wednesday 12th October to my high level classes. I handed this report in on Saturday for methodology class. On Monday 17^th I taught the lesson for a second time, this time to my mid level classes. The results were entirely different. I have only noted the differences in this blog post. The objectives and activating schema ideas are all listed in the original blog post.

Date/Time: Monday 17^th October, 9am – 9.45am, 10.50am – 11.35am, 11.45am – 12.30pm, 1.30pm – 2.15pm

Student Profile: The classes I taught this lesson to today are the mid level classes. They are considerably less forthcoming than the higher level classes that I taught the lesson to previously. Many students are often withdrawn and reticent to speak out loud. They can be very passive, even morose at times. There are however some lively kids amongst them. I always think it is strange to note how communicative many of these students are outside the class. When I see them about school they are often chatty and friendly, often eager to try and speak English. It is like someone hits their ‘off’ switch as soon as they step into the classroom. Their ACTFl proficiency is considerably lower than the high level classes. I would estimate the majority would be classed as ‘Novice High’. I don’t know why there is such a significant difference between the mid and high level classes. I have speculated in the past. The high level classes all seem happy and the mid level classes just don’t exhibit this. An odd example – there was a girl in the high level class who was moved to the mid level class after her midterm result. In the high level class she was one of the most out spoken and communicative students. Now she is in the mid level class she is sullen and defensive. Is it because she has been separated from her friends, she feels embarrassed or angry? I don’t know. Anyway, I have to work much harder to convey the lesson ideas than I do for other classes.

Co-Teacher: My co-teacher for these classes had been Sonsujong, the most senior teacher and the head of the whole English department, but from this lesson onwards my co-teacher is Kyuyun, the most junior teacher in the department. When the students found this out and Kyuyun walked in they were ecstatic. Every class cheered when Kyuyun arrived! I have mentioned in the past that the students really seem to like her and respond well to her. I guess youth and enthusiasm count for a lot.

Pronunciation: In the previous lesson I questioned how I managed to overlook specifically

practicing pronunciation and said “I should have focused on the different pronunciations of

the ‘ed’ ending – [d] in cleaned, [t] in cooked and [id] in wanted” I remembered this time

and it turns out explaining this type of pronunciation is not as straightforward as you might

think. Once we had gone through various examples of grammar construction I thought I

could insert a little two minute section on pronunciation and that would be that. So I write

the three words on the board. I wrote [d], [t] or [id] after each word and asked the students

how to pronounce them. Of course they responded with the alphabet pronunciation. So I

tried using other words with the correct sounds like ‘tin’ for [t]. This just seemed to confuse

the issue. With some help from the co-teacher, who has clearly taught pronunciation like this

before, it was eventually explained. I will have to work on this in future.

Timetable fit/Assumptions: This was the first time I had class with these students since their midterm. This means some of the students have been moved round. Not a huge amount but a few have moved up to a high level class or down to a low level class and some students have newly joined the mid level classes too. Furthermore, the next two lessons I have with these students will be devoted to their speaking test. The next lesson will consist of practicing for the test and the subsequent lesson will be the test itself. So I won’t be able to pick this lesson up until three lessons time. This is a shame because, as detailed below this lesson is only half finished

1. Introduction and Warm Up

Generally speaking this went fine. As I have already mentioned there is a marked difference between the mid and high level classes. But the students were reasonably responsive when encouraged. Completing this lesson report activity has really brought into clarity how much more similar the mid level classes are to the low level classes than they are to the higher level classes. This does not make sense. I found in delivering these classes today that I’m really pushing all the different MIC and CI techniques just like in the low level classes. Is there a psychological effect on the students where by if they are put into the mid level class they just stop trying? Activating their schema should not be as difficult as it is. I noted previously that I agree with Walsh when he argues that terms like ‘disadvantaged’ are socio-cultural constructs of a particular environment. Maybe these labels, ‘mid level, high level’, can be self fulfilling. Theoretically then if you put a student in the mid level class they will not perform as well as they would in the high level class. Is this possible? Or maybe they just won’t try as hard in the mid level class. Is there something about simply ‘being’ in the mid level class that raises their affective filter?

On a positive note the MIC and CI techniques do actually work, which I gratifying even if it is on a lesser scale than with some other classes. However, the ‘pass the paper’ game, the kinesthetic activity I planned was difficult in some classes. The students just weren’t interested in some classes. This is odd – the students in the high and low level classes both really liked it. It is like the mid level kids are excessively self conscious. I was also disappointed to note just how little they had retained from the previous lesson. The last class was all about expressions like ‘big cheese’ and ‘over the moon’. Either they couldn’t remember or they just don’t like speaking out. Either answer is feasible.

My final observation about this section is to do with the issue of timing. This part of the lesson took much longer than I wanted it to. I think when I plan lessons I’m often planning the time as if it is for the best class. In future I need to remember to take into consideration the additional time it takes for the mid level classes to complete an activity.

2. Model Dialogue and Grammar Structures, Part 1

The issues here were essentially the same as those above - it took far too long to complete and the students were not especially responsive. I’m being too negative. The students did fine. They just didn’t excel the way the high level classes did and I feel bad that so many don’t seem to be engaged. Again I really had to push the MIC and CI techniques. This section, which basically consumed the rest of the lesson, was heavily teacher dominated. I taught this section for the second time to the low level classes recently and, second time around, you could see it came to them all the quicker. I wish I could revise this class next week to see how much had stuck with these students. There is not much to add. I didn’t even get on to the rest of the lesson because of the time it took doing this part. I’m left thinking that there must be some way I can reproduce the atmosphere from the high level classes here in the mid level classes. I know that is what activating schema and the MIC techniques are meant to do and to a certain extent it does help. However, I need to get much better at activating their schema and using MIC techniques if I’m going to make a significant difference.

‘Changes’

Wednesday 19^th, October, 2011

Last week’s successes and this week’s relative failure amount to a case of ‘two steps forwards, one step back’. The mid term results have affected the make-up of all my classes. Depending on their results some students have been shuffled around – some have moved up a level whilst others have dropped down. The co-teachers I teach with have been shuffled around too and even the actual class rooms have changed for some of the classes. It has been a confusing week. To add to the confusion my school is hosting a theatrical competition this week. Seven other schools are coming here with some of their students to compete and making the necessary arrangements has led to a hectic working environment. I have been helping our students rehearse (they are doing ‘Red Hiding Hood’ in a Korean style) and it has really thrown my schedule out of step. On a personal note I have been to the dentist 3 times in the past week and not to complain but it has really had a negative effect on my week.

Putting all of that aside what I mainly want to write about today is the follow up to the lesson I gave last week to my low level students. I wrote that the previous lesson was an experiment to see if I could change the way I taught the lower level students. I wanted to see if I could alter my pedagogic purpose in delivering those classes and raise the students own and my expectations of what they were capable. I dispensed with the lesson model I had been using for them and tried to use a more structured lesson plan. Throughout the lesson I tried to include ideas and techniques we have been learning in methodology class – activating schema, lowering the affective filter, bodily kinesthetic responses, different MIC techniques and so on. I concluded that, whilst difficult and teacher dominated, it was a good lesson to build on. The next lesson, the one I want to write about today, would aim to “move them a little ways along the obstructive / controlled continuum closer to the constructive / free end”.

So did today’s lesson build on the last lesson constructively and incorporate a greater degree of freedom in classroom interaction? I think the jury is still out. There were some issues to deal with:

Co-Teachers and Korean in the Classroom

Unfortunately Kyuyun is no longer teaching the low level classes. She has been swapped out with Sonsujong who is the most senior teacher and the head of the English department. Last week I had agreed with Kyuyun that we would not use any Korean in class. Sonsujong uses a lot of Korean, sometimes wresting control of the lesson away from me completely to explain something, at length, in Korean. She is an excellent teacher and a lovely person but I wish she would not do this. However, whereas I was happy to approach Kyuyun about speaking Korean in the classroom there is no way I am going to broach the subject with Sonsujong. Furthermore, the things she is explaining in Korean are things Kyuyun and I managed to convey without using Korean last week – mainly things to do with past tense construction.

There was a significant change in the atmosphere of these classes today. I’m not sure what to attribute this to. Teaching the classes with Kyuyun was difficult last week, I spent a lot of energy and really had to encourage the students to do the work, but it was essentially okay. The students were all awake and just about paying attention for the most part. However, in 2 or 3 classes today there were 1 or 2 students who were simply asleep on their desks. When cajoled by Sonsujong they point blank refused to do anything. Sonsujong actually got really angry and sent a couple of students from the room. A couple of others she just moved to the back of the room where they continued to sleep on their desks. This never happened with Kyuyun. Sonsujong, like the other two more senior co-teachers, is comfortable expressing anger in the classroom whereas the younger co-teachers, Kyuyun and Pakanna, never seem to do so. I have no solid explanation for this. Maybe when Kyuyun has been teaching as long as Sonsujong she will be screaming at the students too. Regardless it obviously changes the tenor of the classroom. I suspect it also has negative implications for the affective filter. Purely anecdotal evidence suggests that the students are happier, more engaged in Kyuyun’s class than in Sonsujongs. (When my grade 2 classes this week found out they were getting Kyuyun they were over the moon. She walked into the class and the students started cheering! There was no cheering from the students who found out Sonsujong was their teacher. Make of this what you will).

There may be another contributing factor. Last week the low level classes were in the English village – the nicest classroom in the school. It is light and airy and full of clean surfaces. The computer works, the technology is great and it is open and spacious. This week and for the rest of the semester the low level classes are in a standard classroom. (They rotate the classes taught in the English village so that every class gets a chance to use it at some point). The standard classrooms are a little rough around the edges, definitely not as inviting for the students or teachers as the English village. Class room environment clearly has a part to play in learner development. As I teach in maybe 19 different classrooms I have no opportunity to influence the way the classroom looks or is set up. This places a greater emphasis on the need for the teacher to bring the atmosphere into the class with them.

The third issue facing today’s lessons was the shuffling of students. Whilst most of the students remained the same, in each class there were one or two who had done well enough in their mid term to be moved up to the mid level class. At the same time there was a couple who were moved down to the low level class. This meant that not every student in these classes had been a part of the previous lesson although they had been a part of a similar lesson given to the mid level classes.

Together these issues conspired to derail my optimistic intentions for the new lesson.

The Regular Past Tense, Revising and Moving Forward

At the end of my last blog post about these classes I concluded (somewhat optimistically) that “the next lesson will afford these students greater opportunities for constructing knowledge and meaning, which Walsh says is one of the main pedagogic aims of a teacher, as they will bring this newly acquired schema with them.” I was crushed to discover that after all my hard work, all the energy, planning and effort of last week’s lesson the students remembered next to nothing! Truly, I was so disheartened. It’s not even that I was expecting them to remember everything or to be able to fluently explain the entire concept of ‘Regular Past Tense’ but I had hoped they would retain more than they did. I had a revision section planned for the beginning of this lesson to ‘refresh’ the students’ memories and connect to the previous lesson. My aim was to build on this foundation by first going over the material from last week and then introducing some little speaking / writing activities. The revision section however took a lot longer than I though it would because their grasp on the material was so tenuous. We spent around 20 minutes reviewing the material from last week. To be fair they picked it up a lot quicker second time around and maybe I was reaching too far too quickly in planning so much for the lesson. So on reflection I think I have to be satisfied. The 20 minutes were essentially spent doing exactly what was done last week – going through each example, checking understanding, choral repetition, modeling, asking questions, getting the students to ask each other the example questions etc. Afterwards I mentioned my disappointment to Sonsujong about the students not remembering the previous lesson. She simply laughed like it was to be expected and said you just have to keep repeating everything and eventually some little amount will be taken in. It really is like pushing a boulder up a hill.

The above actually makes it sound worse than it ultimately was. My expectations here are the problem. I should probably be happier with this result. During the review section I could see they were remembering things, they were putting it together and many students were answering enthusiastically. The bodily kinesthetic activity I planned as a little revision exercise worked really well too. The students were excited and engaged by it – it was a ‘pass the paper’ game. They really enjoyed playing it but still, even after the review section, a couple of students had no idea when it was their turn to answer something.

After the ‘pass the paper’ game it was time to introduce a new exercise. The exercise involved using the grammar we had already worked on plus a couple of small, additional items. So whereas they have already learned “did you cook dinner at the weekend? Yes, I cooked dinner at the weekend’ this time I also wanted them to learn ‘Barry cooked dinner at the weekend’ and ‘Barry didn’t cook dinner at the weekend.’ It was when I was explaining the concept of how to turn an answer someone gives, ‘I cooked dinner at the weekend’, into ‘[name] cooked dinner at the weekend’ or ‘[name] didn’t cook dinner at the weekend’ that Sonsujong intervened and explained in Korean exactly what was happening. I was really disappointed by this. Kyuyun and I did so well last week not using Korean that it felt like such a regressive move to use Korean to explain. I feel that I could have conveyed it quite simply. At the point where I was beginning to explain she just stepped right in and used Korean. I am worried that they are less likely to retain the English knowledge as it was explained in Korean. Still, Sonsujong is too senior a figure for me to ask not to use Korean in the classroom. I am far too concerned that I might offend her. She is my boss so I don’t really want to cause any problems with her.

The activity progressed after this with difficulty anyway. The students who only minutes earlier were excitedly playing a game together were overcome with shyness and reticence. I had to encourage and cajole almost every student. Would it have been smoother had Sonsujong not made a lengthy interjection in Korean? I don’t think it would have made much difference. I tried this activity with one of the Kyuyun classes last week and it was really difficult then too. How then do I explain it? In the lesson at this point they have already demonstrated they understand the grammar (even if it was explained to them in Korean) and they been being energetic and speaking to one another just prior to the activity. There is no real reason why they CAN’T do the activity so what happens in the transition from game to activity? Is it the way it is explained? I think it might have something to do with the distinction between ‘game’ and ‘activity’. The lines are too clearly marked. One is presented as inconsequential, ‘it’s just a game, not really learning’, whereas the other is presented as ‘work time, learning time, so pay attention, don’t get it wrong’. I need to think of a better way to transition from one to the other. I said elsewhere I was happy with a particular lesson introduction because it segued seamlessly from section to section. I was happy because the students shouldn’t notice the joins, the parts where your lesson is stitched together. In this lesson the students could see the stitching. I think this is why the lesson planning exercise was so helpful. I want to plan lessons that flow without jarring changes of direction or abrupt transitions justified only by what I want to achieve. The lesson should have its own internal logic.

Again, I was exhausted after finishing the fourth lesson of the day. The lesson, although not quite as teacher dominated as last week, still required a lot of energy on my part. I’m not sure where to go from here. The next lesson should move on to the irregular past tense whilst incorporating further revision of the regular past tense. I will have to remember to devote a decent amount of time to revising the previous lesson at the beginning of each new lesson. It will be difficult to build on this lesson immediately. The next two lessons I have with the low level classes will be consumed by their speaking test. The next lesson will be given to preparing for the speaking test and the subsequent lesson will be the speaking test itself. So I will have to pick up where I left off after the speaking tests are completed.

In future I need to have more realistic expectations.

Finally, I’m not going to speak to Sonsujong about Korean in the class room so I will simply have to work around that particular issue.