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Issue 120
January
www.etprofessional.com 2019

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Listening: the Integrating

forgotten skill writing
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Lesley Lanir Mark Trevarton

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How many Unlocking the

©

have you got? potential of SAMR

Chris Roland Flora Floris and
Willy Renandya

The practical resource for English language teachers worldwide

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Challenges and
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Contents Issue 120
January 2019

MAIN FEATURE TEACHING YOUNG LEARNERS

4 Listening: the forgotten skill 1 26 Fan fiction

Lesley Lanir starts a new series on barriers Benjamin Moorhouse exploits a growing genre
to effective listening to promote writing

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FEATURES TEACHER DEVELOPMENT
4 44 Six minutes and 40 seconds

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LISTENING
8 Listen up! William Littlewood tackles pecha kucha
presentations with trainees
Chiara Bruzzano adds variety to skills teaching

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SPEAKING
48 No one told me that! 4
Beth Davies and Nicholas Northall offer more
10 Time to think

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tips for those moving into teacher training
Paul Morin believes preparation time is key

SPEAKING TECHNOLOGY
28
12 This is your pilot speaking ...
John Kay has students for whom slow speed
is essential
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52 Online testing
Anastasiya Shalamay assesses the technology
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for assessment
SPEAKING 55 Unlocking the potential of SAMR
13 How many have you got? Flora Floris and Willy Renandya explain how
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Chris Roland sees absent students as an a technology intergration model can transform
opportunity for the others speaking and writing tasks
36
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READING 58 Five things you always wanted to

16 Good news! know about: using technology to
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Mohamed Elhess exploits online news to

promote reading skills
cater for diversity Nicky Hockly sees how IT can make a difference

59 Webwatcher
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READING
18 Making reading more fun Russell Stannard creates flashcards with Quizlet
Graham Perry takes the solitude out of
REGULAR FEATURES
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studying texts

WRITING 20 ENGLISH TEACHING

22 Integrating writing CONFESSIONAL
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Mark Trevarton mixes writing with the other skills Mario Rinvolucri explains why he started
writing to his students
IN THE CLASSROOM
IT WORKS IN PRACTICE
©

32
28 Students’ stories 10
David Heathfield tells a tale of clever trickery
34 REVIEWS
36 SCRAPBOOK
VOCABULARY
60 NOT ONLY, BUT ALSO ...
39 Systematic word learning 1
Chia Suan Chong examines how we can
Charles Jannuzi sets vocabulary learning off encourage a growth mindset
with sets of cards

IN THE CLASSROOM
42 Let’s revise!
Includes materials designed to photocopy,
Martin Bastkowski helps his students remember
some of which can now be downloaded from
what they’ve learnt
the ETp website (see page 3)

www.etprofessional.com Issue 120 • January 2019 1

Editorial
In the world of ELT, when we talk of skills we are classes, and Graham Perry, who has activities to
generally referring to the four skills of reading, make reading more interactive and fun.
writing, speaking and listening. Even more narrowly,
Mark Trevarton is keen that the skill of writing should
we often divide these into the so-called productive
be integrated with the teaching of other skills, rather
skills (writing and speaking) versus the receptive
than being done in isolation. Benjamin Moorhouse

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skills (reading and listening) – however unsatisfactory
sees how young learners can be challenged and
that separation might seem to be. In reality, these
encouraged to become writers, by introducing them

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skills are rarely separate, and each can be seen to
to the genre of fan fiction. And in a welcome return
support the others in some way; yet they are often
to ETp, Mario Rinvolucri explains what led him to a

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tested separately, with the result that they are
career-long exchange of letters with his students.
frequently taught separately, too.
Of course, there’s a whole wide world of skills out

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This issue of ETp considers all four skills, plus a few
there. Our Scrapbook looks at some of the more
more besides. We begin by looking at listening, and in
unusual ones and, in a photocopiable activity, invites

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our main feature, Lesley Lanir begins a new series on
you and your students to showcase your own
identifying and addressing the problems that students
particular skills – and then teach them to others.
may have with listening. She believes that pinning
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down where and why breakdowns in comprehension
occur is key to being able to deal with them. Chiara
Bruzzano offers some practical suggestions for
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approaching listening with more variety, and teaching

students how to listen rather than just assessing
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Helena Gomm
how well they can already do it.
Editor
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For speaking, we have Paul Morin, who advocates Email: helena.gomm@pavpub.com

giving students more time to prepare what they are
going to say; John Kay, who has to teach speaking in
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a very specialised way to aviation personnel; and Connect with us!

Chris Roland, for whom absenteeism is a gift horse
that he definitely isn’t going to look in the mouth.
vil

Representing reading, we have Mohamed Elhess, @ETprofessional linkedin.com/ facebook.com/

etprofessional etprofessional
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who uses online news to cater for diversity in his

©

ENGLISH TEACHING PROFESSIONAL

Published by: Pavilion Publishing and Media Ltd,
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© 2019, Pavilion Publishing and Media Ltd
ISSN 1362-5276
Editor: Helena Gomm
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Editorial Consultant: Mike Burghall
Designer: Emma Dawe
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Publisher: Kirsten Holt Prix à l’unité = EUR14.75;
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unless otherwise stated Directeur de la Publication: Christine Hicks
Pages 29 and 36–38 include materials which are designed to photocopy. All other rights are reserved
and no part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system or transmitted without
prior permission in writing from the publishers.

2 Issue 120 • January 2019 www.etprofessional.com

 ONLINE RESOURCES

Resources online
Go to etprofessional.com/resources for your extra printable resources, ready for use in class.

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ONLINE RESOURCES ONLINE RESOURCES
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Learn a new skill Vocabulary card template

■
These are the instructions for how to balance a spoon on your nose and how to fold a T-shirt in under five seconds.
■
Copy and cut them out into separate cards, making one set for each group of three to four students. Jumble
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each set of cards before you give it to the students. Don’t forget to keep an intact copy for yourself as a
How to balance a spoon on your nose
reference (they are in the correct order below).
How to fold a T-shirt in under five seconds
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Take a small metal spoon. Spread a T-shirt out flat on a table.

Draw an imaginary line going

Hold it in front of your mouth. across it, halfway between
the bottom and the top.

Breathe in deeply, and then Draw another imaginary line

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breathe out so that your breath going vertically, halfway

fogs up the inside of the spoon. between the neck and the edge.

The point where the lines cross is A.

The point where the vertical line meets
Hold the spoon on your nose.
the top of the shirt is B, and the point
where it meets the bottom of the shirt is C.
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Pinch the shirt at point A with your

left hand and pinch B with your
Keep very still.
right hand. Make sure you pinch
both layers of the shirt.

Cross your right hand

Slowly take your hands away.
over to pinch point C.
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Quickly uncross your arms,

The spoon should balance on
and use the table to fold
your nose for a few seconds.
the T-shirt back on itself.

‘Scrapbook: skills’ by Ian Waring Green www.etprofessional.com ‘Systematic word learning 1’ by Charles Jannuzi www.etprofessional.com
©

Learn a new skill Vocabulary card template

Accompanies ‘Scrapbook: skills’ Accompanies ‘Systematic word learning 1’
by Ian Waring Green, page 36 by Charles Jannuzi, page 39

Your subscription to English

Teaching professional gives you
full access to etprofessional.com,
which includes: Online
resources Tracker Digital issue

www.etprofessional.com
MAIN FEATURE
Listening:
the forgotten skill
Lesley Lanir believes we should be attending to the barriers that prevent effective listening.
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n the language classroom, it is reasonably easy for
teachers to be aware of and to measure the degree
to which their students are developing and
gradually becoming more proficient in their
©
speaking, reading and writing skills. However, how
much attention do teachers pay to the development
of their students’ listening comprehension skills?
When students do not succeed in listening tasks, do
their teachers know how to pinpoint why, and
precisely where, the breakdowns in listening
comprehension are taking place?
This is the first in a series of three articles on
recognising some of the barriers to listening
comprehension, and understanding and exploring
how we can assist those students who have difficulties
with processing spoken language successfully.
4 Issue 120 • January 2019
1
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What is listening?
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Stated simply by Dean Thomlison, listening is the
ability to identify and understand what others are
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saying. From the outside, ‘listening’ seems somewhat
passive, yet comprehending spoken language is a
complex achievement, involving numerous parallel
mental processes. John Anderson separates these
processes into three stages, perception, parsing and
utilisation (see the diagram on the next page). Put
simply, the first stage, perception, involves the
students engaging selective and directive attention in
order to perceive language sounds through their
auditory sensory memory and allowing their
phonological abilities to discriminate and compare
them to already learnt and stored sounds
(phonemes). The second stage, parsing, consists of
retaining the perceived and decoded language sound
information in the short-term working memory
while it is analysed and transformed into
meaningful, mental representations – a process that
requires the use of a number of linguistic skills.
Once the analysis is complete, the third stage,
utilisation, takes place. During this stage, the
students will access background knowledge to do
further processing and interpreting of the language
sound information, in order to prepare language
chunks for use and/or longer-term storage.
These three stages of processing occur within
seconds and demand considerable amounts of
mental activity, energy and memory space. However,
an able listener is capable of dealing with all these
processes simultaneously.
For students who are learning a foreign or second
language, the perception and parsing stages are
particularly significant, because at these points, the
listener needs to be aware of the strategies which have
to be applied, in order to deal with the incoming
information effectively; otherwise, it will fade quickly
from sensory memory and short-term memory.
Once teachers become familiar with the different
stages, they can use them to help identify more
specific points of processing weaknesses in their
www.etprofessional.com

students. So, for example, if comprehension fails
because a student is distracted and not paying
attention, the spoken information will not even
reach the sensory memory and the first stage of
processing: perception.
Barriers causing major listening
problems
We are all aware that a noisy and uncomfortable
classroom environment and, when used, poor
quality recordings and classroom equipment, all
have an adverse effect on listening comprehension
and can affect any of the stages from Anderson’s
model mentioned above. However, findings from
research on the acquisition of listening
comprehension strategies allowed Yiching Chen to
categorise seven barriers that can be used to
determine what other factors might be preventing
students from becoming competent listeners.
These categories, adapted below, together with
Anderson’s three stages as described above, provide
a useful checklist for teachers to help detect the
causes of listening comprehension breakdown and
identify the points at which it occurs.
Category 1 Affective barriers
The students’ affective state – how they feel
emotionally – has an impact on all the stages of
listening. If the students feel anxious, frustrated,
upset or demotivated, or if they perceive the task
they have been assigned to be uninteresting or
difficult, little, if any, learning will take place.
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Category 2 Habit barriers
When students rely on old, ineffective habits
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instead of applying more beneficial strategies, their
listening comprehension skills do not develop. For
example, at the parsing stage, resorting to focusing
on every single word, instead of listening for the
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main idea, overloads the short-term working
memory; this prevents the analysis of larger
chunks of incoming language, which may unlock
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overall meaning more swiftly.
Category 3 Information processing barriers
©
Findings have shown that students experience
breakdowns in several areas of information
processing:
Type 1: spoken word recognition
At the parsing stage, students may struggle to
identify or differentiate individual sounds or chunks
in a stream of words. They could also have difficulty
in matching spoken words with words acquired only
through reading – in particular, words such as
jealous, ocean, picturesque, etc, whose pronunciation
differs greatly from their written form. With words
such as these, students may have a different ‘version’
www.etprofessional.com
MAIN FEATURE
Anderson’s Three-stage Listening Comprehension Model
SPEECH
1 PERCEPTION
Attending to spoken input,
using auditory sensory memory
Decoding
phonetic representation
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2 PARSING
Holding language sound information in short-term
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memory, analysing and making sense of it
Parsed/analysed speech
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3 UTILISATION
Using background knowledge to interpret
the input for use and/or storage
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of how they might sound stored in their memories. In addition, students
might recognise spoken words but be unable to recall their meanings fast
enough, or not at all.
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Type 2: processing speed
Difficulties in dealing with the rate of incoming auditory information may
be due to lack of proficiency or parallel processing problems, which may
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come to light during the acquisition of a second language, especially if the
target language has a different sound system from the native language.
Processing incoming data together with applying listening strategies are
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two different cognitive actions. A person at the beginning stages of
learning a second language is unlikely to be able to perform two cognitive
activities at one time. Only when processes become automated will
processing speed increase.
Type 3: input retention
Not only might the rate of incoming information be too fast, students
might experience difficulty in retaining any input that they have managed
to perceive because of sensory or short-term memory limitations and/or
lack of proficiency. If the incoming speech information is not held
temporarily and analysed in the short time available, it will fade away from
the short-term working memory at the parsing stage.
Type 4: processing distraction
If students become distracted by extraneous background noises or their
own thoughts, information processing can be interrupted at any stage –
depending when the interference occurs.
Type 5: interpretation
Even if parsing occurs successfully, the students might not achieve the
correct interpretation of particular vocabulary items and expressions – or
even an entire text – because the topic is unfamiliar and they do not have
the relevant background knowledge to comprehend fully.
Type 6: fatigue
Students get tired and can lose concentration when they lack listening
stamina. Mental fatigue caused by a feeling of overload or general
tiredness results in a breakdown of spoken word processing at all stages.
Issue 120 • January 2019 5
MAIN FEATURE

Category 4 English proficiency barriers t t t

Obstacles to understanding might be connected to a student’s
limited vocabulary, poor grammar or overall low level of
proficiency.
Category 5: Strategic barriers
The students may know several listening comprehension
strategies, but forget to apply them while they are doing a
listening task. Some may regard using strategies as an added
burden to information processing; they may feel challenged by
the complex nature of the strategies; may face problems
identifying when to use the appropriate strategy, or still be
Listening is not as easy as it sounds. When students find
listening comprehension challenging, teachers need to
consider which stage of information processing they are
having difficulty with – perception, parsing or utilisation.
Could the students’ affective barriers, listening habits or
beliefs be interfering with their ability to comprehend spoken
texts? Are the students applying effective listening strategies?
Have they reached the required level of language proficiency
to cope with the material?

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unable to comprehend the text, even after applying strategies. The purpose of this article is to help teachers recognise
where breakdowns in listening comprehension are occurring.

Category 6: Belief barriers
Students may enter our classrooms with beliefs about learning that
delay or halt comprehension. For example, they may consider
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The next one in the series will focus on methods and tips that
they can use to help students overcome these barriers. n

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using listening strategies to be ineffective and believe that
Anderson, J R The Architecture of Cognition Harvard University Press
improving their other language skills is more important. They may
1983
rely on translating the target language into their first language in

order to understand a text. Or they may pay close attention to
every word and resort to looking up each unknown vocabulary
nd
Anderson, J R Cognitive Psychology and Its Implications (4th edn)
Freeman 1995
Chen, Y ‘Barriers to acquiring listening strategies for EFL learners and

item, instead of trying to gain a general understanding.
Category 7: Materials barriers
The teaching materials might be creating a problem; auditory
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information may need to have visual support added, to
facilitate the stages of listening comprehension, especially for
beginners or with tasks that are more challenging.
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their pedagogical implications’ TESL-EJ 8 (4) 2005
Thomlison, T D ‘Relational listening: theoretical and practical
considerations’ Paper presented at the Annual Meeting of the 5th
International Listening Association 1984
Lesley Lanir is a certified life coach and has
an MA in Learning Disabilities, Assessment

and Remediation, and a Bachelor of

Other possible barriers to consider are:
Humanities Degree (summa cum laude) in
■■ not understanding the task instructions; English Language and Literature. She also
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■■ the rate of speech; has a High School Teaching Certificate and

an RSA/Cambridge CTEFLA.
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■■ unfamiliar accents;
■■ text length and complexity; lesleylanir@gmail.com
■■ the genre and its format;
■■ the chosen topic.
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6 Issue 120 • January 2019 www.etprofessional.com

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LISTENING
Listen up!
Chiara Bruzzano offers some practical tips to incorporate in your everyday teaching.
I
magine being in the classroom: you play a CD;
your learners answer questions; you check the
answers together. Does this sound familiar? There
are certainly many possible variations to this
scenario, yet it does seem as if we often struggle
to think of teaching listening with the same variety
of techniques and materials that we would apply to
teaching the other three skills.
There are several reasons for this:
■■ We may not have received much professional
training on teaching listening.
■■ Teachers’ books may only give us support in
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‘procedural’ terms on how to conduct a
listening task.
■■ We may have been led to believe that listening
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will ‘take care of itself’.
While all these reasons are certainly understandable
in real-life situations, as John Field points out, we
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should wonder whether we are doing our learners a
disservice by either disregarding listening as a skill in
its own right, or by teaching it with an exclusively
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comprehension-oriented approach. By only assigning
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comprehension questions to our learners and
subsequently checking their answers, we constantly
check their present level of listening comprehension,
rather than actually developing their skills. And while
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the results of teaching our learners how to listen may
be hard to see in the short term, this should not
discourage us from helping them to develop the
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cognitive processes that they will be able to use to
comprehend better in the long term.
A frustrating experience
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Another reason why we might decide, more or less
consciously, to neglect teaching our learners the skill
©
of listening, is that it can be, quite frankly, a
frustrating experience. Teachers sometimes feel
powerless when faced with learners who, quite
simply, do not understand what they are listening to.
It is arguably easier to help a learner with a
productive skill, where mistakes can be easily
spotted and corrected. Even reading lends itself
much more to the act of teaching, as the text is
normally in front of the learner and can be
manipulated until comprehension is reached, often
without time pressures. With listening, however, the
input is ephemeral, and pinpointing exactly where
comprehension broke down may be a difficult
8 Issue 120 • January 2019
endeavour, even for an experienced teacher or for an
autonomous learner. Breakdowns can depend on a
number of factors, and learners often point to
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accent and speed as being their main problems.
More often, their main problems can be linked to a
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lack of concentration at the beginning of a listening
task, a lack of vocabulary (be it their listening
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vocabulary or even their reading vocabulary),
problematic features of connected speech, lack of
familiarity with a topic, or tasks which are too
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demanding.
With all this in mind, it still needs to be
recognised that in many institutions, ‘traditional’
listening tasks will be the core of the materials
available, and institutional and assessment
requirements will influence the way in which most
teachers will be able to teach listening. While it
would certainly be desirable to focus on listening
just as a skill to learn, and perhaps dismiss outdated
approaches, it is reasonable to argue that this would
not be possible in many contexts. This article,
therefore, offers a list of practical suggestions to
enhance your teaching of listening that can be easily
incorporated into any teacher’s present practice,
even if they feel that it is very traditional.
How to conduct a listening task
Before a listening task
1 Don’t forget to give the learners a reason to
listen: this will keep them focused throughout.
You can do this by giving them a specific task
to do, such as making notes while listening to a
recording, or by having them predict the
content based on the title, and then listen to
confirm whether their hypotheses were correct.
2 Give the learners enough time to familiarise
themselves with whatever task you have set
them. If you forget this, their attention will be
on reading the instructions or the questions,
rather than on listening.
3 Avoid pre-teaching too much vocabulary. You
run the risk of your learners over-focusing on
grasping individual words, rather than making
sense of what they hear.
4 Remember that your learners are likely to want
to understand every word. It is fine to
encourage them to focus on the gist of the
recording and use top-down processing (eg
www.etprofessional.com

using their knowledge of the speaker, the world or
previous parts of the text to make up for any failures in
bottom-up processing: translating acoustic cues into target
language sounds, words, phrases and literal meaning).
However, when this does not work, don’t be afraid to focus
on individual chunks and work on basic decoding, for
example by replaying short extracts that may have caused a
breakdown in comprehension, and asking the learners to
transcribe or focus on the sound that they can hear.
During a listening task
1 Rather than giving the learners questions to answer, why
not give them a graph to fill in or a drawing to do? This
way, they will focus more on listening than on writing or
understanding the questions. This, in turn, allows you to
isolate their listening comprehension ability from their
writing, reading or vocabulary, and to assess better how
they are doing. For lower levels, you could do a picture
dictation in pairs (with one learner describing a picture
and the other listening and drawing it). Or, if you would
like to use multiple-choice questions, how about having
pictures, instead of words, as options? For higher levels, if
the learners are listening to a story, you might give them a
timeline with a few important dates to complete. When
listening to texts with a lot of statistics and numbers, filling
in a graph or table might be easier than answering
comprehension questions.
2 If you are playing a recording, allow the learners to listen
to it more than once, so that they can become familiar
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with the voices of the speakers: having to note down
details while listening only once to a speaker they haven’t
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heard before is an artificial experience that most learners
will not have in their real lives outside the classroom.
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After a listening task
1 Discuss openly with your learners what their problems
and concerns are with listening, both with reference to
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the task that you have already done and in general. Being
aware of your learners’ difficulties, which may sometimes
be related to their L1 or previous teaching experiences, is
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an invaluable tool.
2 Make time for a final speaking activity in which your
learners can relate the content of the listening task to the
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real world.
How to apply a different perspective
©
Give your learners an active role. Let them take ownership of
the task and create a set of questions or respond to the content
of a listening, rather than having to do a pre-set task. When
using recordings, allow them to listen individually (with tablets,
phones, etc) and use the pause button to self-regulate.
Recycle. You can re-use the same text with different purposes in
different lessons, so that the learners end up using different
strategies to extract information from it or to react to it. You
can also recycle the topic by using different texts on the same
topic. Both these strategies allow your learners to recycle
vocabulary: they will feel more in control, lower their listening
anxiety and increase their motivation to listen.
www.etprofessional.com
LISTENING
Increase the learners’ listening vocabulary. When teaching
vocabulary, remember that if a learner knows or learns the
written version of a word and its translation, that does not
guarantee that the word will be recognised in listening. Make
your learners aware of the importance of incorporating the
pronunciation of the vocabulary that they study into their
systematic records of new words, if their age allows.
Expose your learners to a range of different accents. Include
non-native accents. This is already a feature in some textbooks,
and listening to a non-native speaker of English is an
increasingly likely scenario for learners nowadays. Try to detach
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yourself from traditional dichotomies of American/British
English and consider introducing an element of English as a
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lingua franca in your lessons.
Teach listening not only as unidirectional. A great part of the
listening that happens in real life is not unidirectional (eg
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listening ‘passively’ to the radio or watching TV), but
interactional. Therefore, while using CDs and videos is
certainly fundamental, make room for interaction in your
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lessons. This will give you the chance to teach coping strategies
in communication (such as interrupting or asking the
interlocutor to rephrase), which can give the learners a sense of
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control over their listening.
Make notes. When your learners struggle with listening, don’t
be intimidated, but observe. Don’t take a good answer to a
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question as a sure sign of comprehension: two learners may
have chosen the same answer by understanding very different
portions of an aural text. Do not hesitate to ask them when
exactly their comprehension broke down, what they
understood, and compare it to the actual text. This should give
you an idea of the nature of their listening breakdown. For
example, they might have struggled with a weak form and
failed to identify a word, or they may have not recognised a
known word in connected speech. Noting down the nature of
these problems can ultimately aid you to detect patterns and, if
you feel confident doing so, tackle them by creating micro-
listening exercises in which the learners can be exposed to and
practise particular features that they struggle with.
t t t
Listening is undoubtedly a difficult task, not only for our learners,
but for us as teachers too. Hopefully, these tips will help you think
of it as a little less daunting and a little more manageable. n
Field, J ‘Listening in the language classroom’ ELT Journal 64 (3) 2010
Chiara Bruzzano is a PhD candidate at the
School of Education, University of Leeds,
UK. She has taught English in Italy, Spain
and the UK. Her main interests are listening
instruction and strategies, learner and
teacher beliefs and English as a lingua
franca.
chiara.bruzzano@gmail.com
Issue 120 • January 2019 9
SPEAKING
hin
b lis
Paul Morin identifies a key ingredient for better speaking classes.
Pu
I
magine that you’re at the ticket counter of a bus station in a
foreign country, and the ticket agent asks you a question in
ion
a language that you’re still trying to learn.
After a few seconds, you figure out what he asked, and
your brain gets started on putting a response together: OK,
vil
what’s the word for ‘round-trip’? It’s uh ... . Oh, and how do I say
‘different city’? Um, it’s ... . And what’s ‘terminal’ again? And
‘window seat’?
Pa
Words crowd into your head with no rhyme or reason, while
others completely vanish. The ticket agent is drumming his fingers,
and suddenly you feel like you can’t speak the language at all. You
©
sense the impatient stares of the other people in line behind you.
You start to sweat. You wish things would just stop for a minute so
you could gather your thoughts and sort out your response.
Even if you’ve never been in this situation, I’m sure you can
imagine it.
So now imagine your own students in your own speaking
class. You ask them a question. Some words crowd into their
heads, while others vanish. They sense you waiting, feel the eyes
of the other students on them. They wish things would just stop
for a minute.
It’s an awful situation to put them in. Luckily, you have the
power to give them something the ticket agent didn’t give you.
10 Issue 120 • January 2019
ia
ed
M
Time
nd
to think
ga
A step closer to genuine
communication
Sometimes you have a discussion in class that comes off
beautifully. Everybody is talking, debating the issue, chiming
in with additional thoughts, agreeing and disagreeing – in
short, communicating – surprising you and probably even
themselves by the amount and sophistication of the English
they are using. You didn’t do anything to make it happen; it
seems like an accident.
You can take a step closer to that, and a step away from the
ticket agent experience, with one simple addition to your lesson
plan: preparation time before speaking – time for your students
to plan what they’ll say, or simply to gather the vocabulary and
grammar they might need.
Reasons to pause
It stands to reason that, when given time to prepare what they
want to say in a task, students say it better, with greater fluency
and accuracy.
Giving students preparation time also levels the playing field.
You probably have some talkative students who don’t have any
trouble contributing to a discussion – or even completely taking
it over – alongside more reticent ones who struggle to express
www.etprofessional.com

their opinions. With preparation time, you can put your timid or
quiet students on a more even footing with the students for
whom speaking comes easily.
Whether they are confident or not, you will want all your
students to push their language beyond what they already know,
to take it further by trying to say things that they’ve never said
before. You may already be giving them preparation time,
especially when the class is taking on a serious discussion of a
heavy issue, such as the death penalty. But you don’t need to
reserve preparation time for the big, serious discussions only.
Whether short or long, simple or complex, any speaking task will
benefit from a period of thinking time beforehand, to give the
students a chance to get ready.
An example
At the start of a lesson, do you ever ask your students what they
did over the weekend, or what they did last night? What kind of
answers do you get?
Even though these are simple questions, you can’t deny that
the students’ responses would benefit from some preparation
time, in which they can put together a better answer than they
might give otherwise. Instead of ‘I study’, you might get: ‘I
studied at the library with my roommate. After that, we ate pizza.’
An answer like that offers a lot of possibilities for further
exploration (eg How was the pizza? What kind of pizza?).
Making time
lis
If you look at your average lesson plan, you’ll see that there are
countless opportunities to give the students time to prepare. The
following are some ideas, roughly in order of task complexity:
b
Simple
Pu
Sample task: You ask the students to describe what they did
over the weekend, as above, or describe a photo in their phone
or a picture in their textbook. Note that there are no wrong
ion
answers here, and that their responses will be fairly short.
In a task like this, the students probably already know the
vocabulary and grammar they need to respond adequately. That
vil
doesn’t mean they have it at their fingertips, though. Offering a
minute or two for preparation gives them a chance to flesh out
an answer that addresses the prompt more fully than they would
Pa
have otherwise, a chance to recall the words and possibly even
the grammar they’ll employ.
So, after you assign the task, you might introduce the
preparation time by saying: ‘OK, take a minute. Think of
©
the words you will need, especially the verbs. Maybe write
them down.’
At this point, you might have some students ask permission
to get out their phone to look up a word. Let them, because
this is a sign that your strategy is working – they would never
have thought to seek out the word otherwise.
Intermediate
Sample task: You give the students an information-gap activity
to do in pairs, with the partners required to trade information
in order to complete the task. This category would include any
task in which student speech requires some kind of accuracy or
www.etprofessional.com
SPEAKING
completeness for the task to be successful. There are right and
wrong answers.
In a task like this, the students may not need time for
organisation, but they may for accuracy. You want to give them
a chance to sort out exactly how to use the specific language
they will need. You might say: ‘OK, take a few minutes, and
think about what you’ll have to say. Try to think of the exact
words you need. How will you use them? I can help. Write them
down if you want. You don’t have to write full sentences.’
Difficult
Sample task: You ask the students to decide in groups which of
ia
four fictional job candidates should get a fictional job. Any
issue-oriented discussion that introduces the potential for
ed
differing opinions falls into this category.
In these tasks, if it’s a discussion about a contentious
M
issue, words themselves will not be enough: the students
need time to decide what their opinion actually is, form it
into complete thoughts in English, and organise those
nd
thoughts, if necessary.
So you might say: ‘We’re going to take some time to write
ga
down what we think. Then we’ll talk about it. So put some
sentences down. You don’t need to write paragraphs. I don’t want
you to read out your opinions – this is a speaking class. Just write
the important points. Use other words to remind you.’
hin
In an advanced task like this, the students might also be
required to reach a consensus in groups. The activity may, in
fact, extend over two or three stages. In such a case, there’s no
reason you can’t give the students two or three opportunities to
put their thoughts in order silently.
Try it out
If you’re not sure whether preparation time will benefit your
classes or not, why not ask your students? After assigning a
task or posing a question, simply ask them: ‘Do you want time
to think about your answer?’
Another idea you might try is to give your students
preparation time in some tasks but not others, and keep track
of which tasks are more successful.
t t t
The chances are, if you add preparation time into your lesson
plans, and make sure your students take advantage of it, over
time their class contributions will get better and better, their
voices gradually gaining in confidence and pride. n
Paul Morin is a teacher and writer living in
North Carolina, USA. He has taught English
in Turkey, North Cyprus and the United
States.
paul.d.morin@gmail.com
Issue 120 • January 2019 11
SPEAKING
This is
your pilot
speaking ...
John Kay has a poem to help aviation
personnel slow down.
o be an aeroplane or helicopter pilot, flight navigator
or air traffic controller, you must prove that you can
speak and understand English to an acceptable level.
The International Civil Aviation Organisation
(ICAO) has a speaking and listening test with six
levels of achievement. To secure your licence, you must achieve
at least Level 4 – roughly equivalent to CEFR B2.
The ICAO states that its proficiency rating scale:
■■ ‘Puts all English speakers in the same category.
■■ Does not use native English speakers as the norm.
Advises a type of English that belongs to no particular country
hin
■■
or group of people.’
These seem worthy objectives. It goes on to say:
‘Speech transmitting technique should be such that the highest
lis
possible intelligibility is incorporated in each transmission. Fulfilment
of this aim requires that aircrew and ground personnel should:
b
a enunciate each word clearly and distinctly.
Pu
b maintain the speaking volume at a constant level.
c maintain an even rate of speech not exceeding 100 words
per minute.’
ion
In many ways, this goes against what we teach our general English
students, as we normally encourage them to add light and shade
and to recognise and use all the features of connected speech.
vil
I use a poem to raise my aviation students’ awareness of how
slow 100 wpm is; the importance of enunciating clearly; and the
fact that the usual ‘expert speaker’ rate is well over 100 wpm.
Pa
General English students may be interested to learn about how
those in the aviation industry are encouraged to speak – and
they may like to listen out next time they are at an airport or on
©
a plane for how well the professionals are keeping to the rules!
Guessing it wrong
When we listen to English, we sample sounds from the stream
of speech. Based on this sampling and other paralinguistic
information, we can usually identify what someone is saying.
‘Knowing’ what someone has said, without actually hearing it
completely, is how people listen. However, in aviation, it can
lead to what is known as ‘the problem of expectancy’, which
results in pilots climbing when they should descend, or worse!
In January 2006, the Civil Aviation Authority reported
that ‘80% of radio-telephony transmissions by pilots were
incorrect in some form or other’.
12 Issue 120 • January 2019
Slow it down
The following poem (including the title) contains exactly 100
words and should take precisely one minute to read, spoken
at the correct speed for aviation personnel.
One Hundred Words Per Minute
One hundred words per minute seems quite slow,
To any native English speaker’s ear.
But that’s the speed an ATC [/eɪ tiː siː/] must go,
If what they say is going to come out clear.
To any native English speaker’s ear,
ia
One hundred words per minute seems quite slow.
But that’s the speed that’s going to keep things clear,
ed
And meet requirements set by ICAO [/aɪ keɪ əʊ/].
The English language, it would seem, produces
M
More sounds per second than the human ear can hear.
So bearing that in mind, consider this,
How many of these sounds can you find here?
nd
First, I dictate the poem one line at a time, at normal speed,
and encourage the students to ask for confirmation and
clarification, and for me to speak more slowly. They compare
ga
in pairs after each line.
I then remind them about the 100 wpm rule, and
demonstrate how slow this is by reading the poem again: first
at normal speed, then in exactly one minute (not easy!), paying
attention to enunciation, level intonation and clarity.
The students then practise with each other, focusing on
enunciation and timing, trying to avoid any elision, assimilation
or intrusive sounds.
I follow this up by writing the poem on the board, line by
line, identifying linkages, to show what happens if they speak
faster than 100 wpm. This has always been an eye-opener!
Air traffic controllers and pilots often argue that 100 wpm
is too slow and that it is crucial that they speak faster in order
to save time. I remind them that ICAO research has indicated
that more time is wasted asking fast speakers to repeat.
I find that ‘native speaker’ aviation personnel, often exempt from
the rating scale, are less likely to stick to 100 wpm than their
‘non-native speaker’ colleagues. On the odd occasion I have
worked with ‘native speakers’, most had no idea of the 100 wpm
rule, which explains why passengers often listen in bemusement
when pilots welcome them on board holiday flights! n
John Kay is the Training Development
Director at ETC/Athena Teacher Training in
Bournemouth, UK.
john@etc-inter.net
www.etprofessional.com

How many have
you got?
Chris Roland uses unexpected drops in attendance to maximise speaking practice.
ga
O
ne occasion that I have noticed tends
to throw teachers off balance is when
hin
a significantly smaller number of
students turn up to class than they
were expecting. In the case of
teenagers, this might be because a lesson coincides
lis
with a local festival, a school trip, external exams, or
because it falls at the end of term when reports have
b
already been given out and, mentally, people have
started to break up for the summer or winter.
Pu
Extreme weather conditions may be another cause.
In such cases, a common sight is teachers toing
and froing between staffroom and class, unsure as
ion
to whether to launch into the lesson they had
planned for that day – because the whole-class
activities intended might not work with fewer
learners; because they don’t want to use up the
vil
materials they have prepared on only a contingent
of the class; or because pressing on with a regular
Pa
lesson would mean putting those few students
ahead, in terms of syllabus covered.
As their teacher flits about and can be heard
conferring with colleagues (How many have you got?
©
or I’ve only got three), the students sit awkwardly in
their respective rooms, wondering why they came,
texting their parents messages such as ‘I told you
nobody was going to come, Mum!’, trying to locate
other students via WhatsApp and hoping that they
will not be put together with the remnants of
another class, while watching the first ten or 15
minutes go by on the classroom clock.
This is a scenario that I have lived first-hand
many times, but it is also one that I have managed
to free myself from, because of an increasing
conviction, over the years, that reduced classes like
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SPEAKING
ia
ed
M
nd
these are an absolute gift to the language teacher. It
is normally the ratio of many students to just one
teacher that puts a logistical ceiling on the amount
of personalisation and personalised attention we are
able to give our students in class. Here, that ceiling is
raised a great deal higher – but making the most of
it does require some adjustments.
Making the transition
The first thing we need to do when faced with a
reduced class is to change our seating
arrangements. If you have two or three students,
there is little point in trying to teach from the
board with a mountain of empty space between
you and the class. You might have the students
come to you and sit around your teacher’s table, or
you go to them, asking the students to sit together
and then shifting your chair and maybe your table
over. Depending upon how the class is set up,
another option may be to pull everyone into the
middle of the room. With all three strategies, we
are closing down distance, which sends the clear
message that this is going to be a different sort of
lesson. We are also sitting down and staying sitting
down, rather than faffing and flapping about. This
sends out the message that we are relaxed, we have
a plan and we are here to stay and chat.
Having transitioned from a teacher–class set-up to
an interviewer–interviewee(s) style set-up, we then
need to get things underway. Just as most real-life
chats that we have are not fronted with ‘Hey, let’s have
a conversation now!’, this can be done without any
trumpets or fanfare. If you are in the habit of making
small talk with the first few students to arrive, this can
be done quite naturally. However, even veteran
Issue 120 • January 2019 13
SPEAKING
interviewers need some back up. For this, I have a list of questions
printed out and always to hand.
My own list is a resource I created some five years ago. It
consists of 300 questions, divided into 20 common topics, such
as neighbourhood, animals, personality and technology. These
are available on my website, and a more polished version is
included as a downloadable resource in my recent teens’
methodology book. Adapting that, or writing your own list from
scratch, is an excellent option. When using these questions, I do
often read out the topic headings and let my teenagers choose
the one or two they like most, resulting in conversations like this:
But are we going to do this for the whole lesson, teacher?
Just talk?
Let’s have a chat for a while and see how we get on.
But there’s only three of us. What can we do?
We can do MORE than normal. I can ask you questions and
listen to you very very carefully and give you the words that you
need. So what topics do you want from the ones I read out?
Mmm … Can we hear them again?
Our role as listener
Listening as a friend and listening as a language teacher are
different things. As a teacher, you have no reason ever to feel guilty
hin
about making notes as your students speak. Quite the contrary: it
means we are doing our job. It may not be something that feels
natural to start with, but it is a skill that can be developed.
lis
Zoning your paper
We can also help ourselves by the way we structure our notes. I
b
recommend, for each student present, zoning a piece of paper,
Pu
as shown in Figure 1.
Ana
ion
vil
Pa
input
errors language
©
further question prompts
Figure 1 Zoned paper
14 Issue 120 • January 2019
Once you have got started, you note down on one side
systematic errors that you hear. Writing them down as you hear
them is easy and quick. On the other side, you jot down new
language – both that which you have provided as the student is
speaking, so that they can carry on, as well as additional
phrases that it occurs to you may be useful as they are
speaking. Then finally, at the bottom of the page, you scribble
prompts for follow-up questions that spring to mind as you
listen. You can then backtrack to these if and when there is a
lull in the exchanges.
After every five or ten minutes of conversation, you spin the
ia
paper(s) round and correct the errors with each student and run
over the input language. Some of it will naturally repeat if you
ed
remain on the same topic for another five or ten minutes.
In Figure 2, I have used the edge detector feature on a
photo editing programme to show you more clearly how, with
M
two students in attendance, I had my questions in the centre
and feedback from these working its way onto the zoned pieces
of paper for each of the students on either side.
nd
On this occasion, the following set of 15 questions about
personality and self kept the three of us going for over an hour.
ga
Self
If you were an animal, what animal would you be?
What’s your favourite colour? Why?
What are you really into?
Is there anything in this world you can’t stand?
How would you describe yourself?
How many people really know you?
Are you a relaxed person?
Are you a patient person?
Is your life like you want it to be?
What do your teachers say about you?
Do you often laugh at other people?
Why do your friends enjoy being with you?
Do you know what your star sign is? (Zodiac)
Do you know what Chinese year you were born in? (dog,
dragon, etc)
Which element best describes you? (earth, water, fire, air)
Figure 2 Questions in the centre and notes for each student on either side
www.etprofessional.com
 SPEAKING

This system of a separate feedback sheet per student is

workable for up to four students. With any more than that,
you will start to run out of desk space.

And if the rest turn up?

If you have these measures at the ready, there is no need to
feel any anxiety when faced with the possibility of a reduced
class. I recently had only one advanced-level teenager at the
start of the lesson. I was not wearing the new boots I had
worn in the lesson before and explained that they had made
my feet sore. I sat down and she started to tell me about a pair

ia
of Doc Martens she had. I quickly divided up a piece of
paper, as described above, and at the two-minute mark already

ed
had ‘to wear them in’ and ‘softened up’ on the input language
side. At that point, the rest of the class filed in – they had
decided to come to class in the end rather than go trick or

M
treating (it was Halloween night). My point here is that I was
able to transition smoothly back to the regular class I had Figure 3 With a little bit of cooperation, everybody gets a go
planned. Nobody had lost anything. There had been no

nd
perceived uncertainty on the part of the teacher and the teacher, where each student sat and described a picture for a
student who had been first to arrive felt just as valued when it minute and received feedback at the end (see Figure 3).
was her on her own as when her classmates turned up.

Being proactive
With the reader’s permission, I would now like to take the
subject just a little further. I believe it is one-to-one teacher–
student exchanges that set the tone for whole-class
cooperation. We do not have to wait until their classmates are
lis
ga
Meanwhile, the rest of the class worked quietly on exercises
from their activity books, allowing everyone to practise in a
half-hour period.
hin
We have also just had a round, not of one-to-one
speaking with the teacher, but two-to-one speaking, where
the students have sat and discussed something with a
partner, again receiving feedback from me at the end of their

off to give individuals some undivided teacher attention. We allotted two minutes.
can make space for that in a regular class. If the rest of the
class is working on an exercise from their coursebook, we can
b

ask students to come and sit with us, one by one, and listen to t t t
Pu

them for a minute as they deliver a short monologue, talk us

through an anecdote or describe a picture. To this end, I try,
whenever possible, to have two teacher-style chairs up at the Obviously, we will not always be able to talk to everybody in a
front. On a semiotic level, I think this helps convey the notion single lesson, and the larger the class, the more difficult this
ion

that each student has a legitimate place sitting talking to, and becomes. We can, however, aim to talk to each student every
getting language guidance from, their teacher as well as sitting so often. As we have seen, seizing the chance to do so when
with their peers. there is a fortuitous drop in student attendance is one way.
vil

Systematically making a place for this amongst regular

The movement and the small level of facilitative tension
classwork is another, and ensures our time is more fairly
this creates can help fuel improved language production, and
meted out. In a medium-to-large class, we might try to give
if we make time at the end of the exchange to give feedback
Pa

every student time to work through an exam-style speaking

on just a couple of errors and just a couple of input items,
task with the teacher over the course of two or three lessons. I
then we have given them something to take to the next
think one thing is for sure: in answer to the question ‘What
conversation they have about that topic. Being able to
did you do in English class today?’ we are never going to go
©

fragment a regular class like this and have two things going on
far wrong when the answer is ‘I spoke, and the teacher
at once requires effective task design and effective classroom
listened to me’. n
management on the part of the teacher. Securing cooperation
on the part of the class by convincing them of the usefulness
Chris Roland is a trainer based at ELI, a
of these short practice slots is, perhaps, the key element to language academy in Seville, Spain. He also
success here. The ability to hone our ear to the person in front tutors on the Trinity Diploma course for
of us, cutting out the, hopefully productive, murmur in the Oxford TEFL, Barcelona. His first
background, is also a skill that can be developed. methodology book, Understanding
Teenagers in the ELT Classroom, has just
been published by Pavilion.
Getting round them all www.chrisroland.net
With my current pre-B1 group, at my students’ request, we
have just had a round of one-to-one speaking with the

www.etprofessional.com Issue 120 • January 2019 15

READING

Good news!
Mohamed Elhess finds online news stories perfect for a diverse classroom.

M
y classes are usually fairly diverse, consisting of lesson and either match their current language abilities or
adult students from a variety of backgrounds, are at a slightly higher level, to offer a degree of challenge.

ia
with different experiences of learning English
and, more importantly, different abilities and 2 Explain your objectives

ed
interests. Using the same reading text with the Begin your class by explaining the language function(s) of the
whole class can be problematic: it may be beneficial and lesson you are giving. Use illustrations, mention a real-life
interesting for some, but not others. One of the ways I offer situation, etc. For example, for the function of defining a problem

M
more choices in my classes is through the use of online news and suggesting possible solutions, you could present the example
stories. These stories cover topics in different genres: current below: a short news item about teaching crows to pick up cigarette
affairs, business, entertainment, historical events, etc, and any butts in a French theme park. Before embarking on studying this

one of these can be a good source for the students to select
something that they really want to read.
Why online news?
Unlike printed newspapers, online news outlets provide easily
accessible resources. Using smartphones, computers or readers,
hin
the students can do an internet search to obtain a variety of
results on any specific subject. They can then choose something
that engages their interest. The pervasive expansion of online
lis
nd
particular news item, you could discuss with the class other types
of pollution and how other pollution issues could be solved – eg
cutting emissions by replacing cars with bikes.
gaMake sure to connect your examples to the news item and
language function. After that, as you read the text about crows,
engage the students with questions such as What is the problem?
What solution have they found? List these questions and the
students’ answers on the board. You could also help the
students by giving them a handout with the target language

news sources means that the students can facilitate their function put into sentence frames. For example:
understanding by means of multimodal (images, audio and One reason ______happens is that ______
video) content. In addition, online channels such as CNN and
b

Such factors can lead to _______

the BBC present the same news in different languages. Online
Pu

news may also offer a variety of language-level-differentiated

versions of stories that can provide equal opportunities for all
learners, regardless of their proficiency. There are some examples
of useful online news sources at the end of this article.
ion

Online news in action

To help teachers envision the application of online news
vil

stories in the classroom, I am suggesting a practical step-by

step procedure that can be followed.
Pa

1 Identify your students’ interests

Always conduct a needs analysis, by means of a questionnaire or
a survey, to understand your students better. In addition to
©

finding out about their language abilities, try to learn more about
their interests and how they learn within their own social context.
Things that it can be useful to find out include:
■■ What topics capture their interest? Why?
■■ What kind of topics do they read about for fun?
■■ Do they work comfortably by themselves or do they prefer
working with others?
After you have gathered information about your students,
help them to select news items on topics they are interested
in, depending on the context, the demography and the
resources that are available. Ensure that the students select
news texts that align with the language function(s) of the
3 Guide, modify and engage
After the students have chosen what they want to read, give
them a worksheet to use as a guide during the reading process.
This might include sentences to complete. For example:
Before reading
From the pictures and the headline, I can tell that this article
is about ...
During reading
The article is mainly about ...
Based on the context, I think the meaning of the word [x] is ...
At first I thought …, but now I think that ...

16 Issue 120 • January 2019 www.etprofessional.com


After reading
I would change the title of the article to ...
Have higher-level students read and interact with the news text
by applying their own personal learning preferences:
■■ Some may watch a video that accompanies the text.
■■ Some may post and share the news on social media.
■■ Some may use online channels to post and exchange
comments on the story at the end of the news homepage.
Meanwhile, guide lower-level students, giving them any support
they may need, such as helping them to find more than one
news source reporting on the same topic, in order to find a
simpler explanation. For example, at the time of the royal
wedding in the UK, one online news headline read:
Meghan Markle’s father recovering after heart surgery
Another was:
Meghan Markle’s father is reportedly ‘OK’ after heart surgery
Encourage the students to use multiple sources to help each other
with unknown words, leading to conversations such as:
Student A: What does ‘Markle’s father is recovering’ mean?
Student B: It means ‘he was sick but he is feeling better now’.
Also, exploit the fact that some online channels present the
same news in different languages to help lower-level students.
4 Reflect
Using the students’ worksheets, hold a class discussion to
reflect on all the students’ ideas. As the class engages in the
lis
Useful tips
b
1 Encourage each student to build their vocabulary skills as
Pu
they read news texts outside the classroom. They can create
their own thesaurus as they come across new synonyms or
antonyms, create a journal of word forms (verb, noun,
ion
collocations, etc) and note the positions of words in difference
sentences or common phrases. For example:
■■ Archaeologists have discovered a massive ancient
vil
building in Egypt.
■■  he Ancient Egyptians were serious cat people, if a
T
discovery in a tomb near Cairo is any indication.
Pa
■■ Several other discoveries have been made in recent
months, including a necropolis in the Tuna al-Gabal area.
2S
 tudents need to be taught how to distinguish between fake
©
information and that from reliable news sources. Good
techniques include comparing different sources to verify
their stance, questioning their reputation, checking the origin
of any images, and so on.
3E
 ncourage the students to apply comprehension strategies
and skills to monitor their own understanding. For example,
you can give them a news story without a title and have
them create one. They can then compare their titles with the
original; you can also get them to compare the events of
one particular news item with another version, or create
questions around the topic of a news story.
www.etprofessional.com
READING
discussion, interact with the students and offer feedback as
they share their own findings:
Why do you think that this event happened?
What you think about the events in the news?
What did your friends on social media think of this story?
Always encourage a non-threatening atmosphere by asking
open-ended questions that do not have right or wrong answers.
Encourage the students to use the target language function as
they present their findings to each other.
5 Assess
ia
Devise tasks based on the news items that the students have
read which they will find meaningful and engaging. For
ed
example, if your students are interested in the nuclear talks
between the USA and North Korea, you could encourage them
M
to do a project on the topic in which they collaborate to write
news reports based on what they have read.
Always let your students know the criteria on which they
nd
will be evaluated: handing out copies of a checklist of the
criteria is useful. For example, you might tell them that they
will be assessed on their understanding of the text, their use of
ga
the correct language for the target function and their fulfilment
of the objectives outlined earlier.
Then ask the students to choose one of the following tasks:
hin
■■ Perform a roleplay in which you take the part of a
newsreader, reporter or news analyst.
Write a short summary of the news item you have read.
■■
■■ Create a pictorial storyboard of the sequence of events in the
news item. Write one sentence under each scene, describing
what is happening.
t t t
Choice is essential in order to create the kind of environment
that is needed for a successful mixed-ability classroom. We need
to empower our students so that they feel competent, express
what they know, know what to do, and can master ways to
overcome challenges independently. n
News sites with News in different
level-graded content: languages:
www.newsinlevels.com www.euronews.com/tag/languages
https://breakingnewsenglish.com www.bbc.com/ws/languages
https://newsela.com www.voanews.com
https://newsineasyenglish.com https://arabic.cnn.com
Mohamed Elhess is a PhD student in the
Department of Curriculum and Instruction at
the University of Idaho, USA. He is also a
member of the adjunct faculty at the College
of Education at Washington State University,
teaching courses in English as a Second
Language. His research interests include
student engagement, creativity and
addressing the needs of culturally and
linguistically diverse learners.
midodonny@gmail.com
Issue 120 • January 2019 17
READING
Making reading
more fun
Graham Perry suggests some activities to bring texts to life.
B
y its very nature, reading can
be a solitary, introverted
activity. As such, it can kill
the pace and dynamic nature
of a class outright. The way
that I have sought to solve this problem
over the years is two-fold:
■■ Break up reading classes – don’t do all
the exercises one after the other, and
don’t present the students with a
monolithic block of comprehension
questions, true/false statements or
gapped sentences. Instead, do a
number of short activities. Set strict
time limits, and alternate reading with
speaking and other tasks.
■■ Introduce interaction (and movement,
where possible) before, during and
after reading a text.
Here are some of the activities I use:
1 Red herrings
This pre-reading activity pre-teaches
vocabulary and is fun at the same time.
■■ Select seven or eight words from your
ion
reading text. Make sure that most of
them have very strong links to the topic
of the text, and that a few have a
slightly more tenuous connection.
vil
■■ Think of a few other words which
aren’t in the text (you might choose
Pa
words that seem like they might be in
the text or completely unrelated words).
■■ Write all the words on the board.
©
Explain the topic of the text, and ask
the students to discuss and predict
which words they will and won’t find
in it. Award points for correct guesses
if you want to make this competitive.
2 On the wall
This activity makes a potentially dry
reading exercise very lively and dynamic.
■■ Write a number of comprehension
questions based on the text (or use the
coursebook questions, but copy them
out onto a separate worksheet: you
18 Issue 120 • January 2019
don’t want the students looking at the
text in their books).
■■ Photocopy the reading text twice and
cut each copy into five or six sections.
■■ Display the sections of text randomly
M
around the room.
■■ Put the students into pairs or small
teams and give them the questions.
nd
■■ Tell them they have a time limit to find
the answers. Then watch them race
around the room reading the sections of
ga
text and trying to answer the questions.
Note: Make two copies of the text to cut
up, otherwise you’ll find too many students
hin
at once crowded around one piece of paper
trying to answer the questions.
lis
3 Key word summaries
This activity encourages interaction after
an initial reading.
b
■■ Divide the text into several sections.
Pu
■■ Put the students into groups (as many
groups as there are sections of text).
■■ Give each group a section to read.
■■ Explain that, while they read, they are
allowed to write down eight (and only
eight) key words from the text. Explain
that after they have read their section,
they will use these key words to
summarise it.
■■ Once all the students have their key
words, mix the groups. Each new group
should include at least one member from
each of the previous groups. The
students are not allowed to take the text
to their new group, only their key words.
■■ They then summarise their sections of
the text to each other.
■■ Finish by giving these groups a
comprehension exercise, and ask them
to collaborate to answer the questions.
4 What did I change?
The aim is to assess how much the students
have taken in from an initial reading.
■■ Put the students into pairs, and ask
them to select one or two sections
from a text they’ve just read.
■■ Ask them to copy these sections out
on pieces of paper, but changing a
piece of information in each one –
make sure this is factual and not
grammatical (unless, of course, you
want to focus on a particular piece
of grammar). So, for example, they
could take the sentence:
ia
At the time, I had no idea that this
red-haired whirlwind would within months
ed
become one of my life-long friends.
And they might change it as follows:
At the time, I had no idea that this
red-haired whirlwind would within weeks
become one of my life-long friends.
Once they’ve finished, ask them to
■■
leave the papers on their desks and to
stand up.
■■ Ask the pairs to circulate around the
room and try to work out how each
section has been changed.
5 Who or what am I?
This post-reading activity gets the
students talking and asking questions.
■■ Ask each student to secretly choose a
person or object described in the text.
■■ In pairs or groups, they play ‘Twenty
questions’ in order to guess who or
what their partners have chosen. (They
can ask each other a maximum of 20
questions. However, the person being
asked may only answer Yes, No or I
don’t know. In my rules, questions
which provoke an I don’t know answer
don’t count as one of the 20.)
t t t
Why not try these activities? Then, if
they work, try them again. Have fun! n
Graham Perry is
from Brighton, UK,
and started
teaching in 1991.
Since then, he has
worked in private
schools in Spain
and the UK,
teacher training
and, for the last 20
years, working with
international students in the further
education sector.
grahamperry99@yahoo.co.uk
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Write for us
ion

We are always looking for fresh ideas that will appeal to our
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vil

teacher with something to say, we would like to hear from you.

Pa

Why write for ETp? Reader friendly

There are many benefits of writing for publication. We are looking for articles that are of direct relevance and
It encourages reflection, which is good for your own immediate interest to teachers in the classroom – as you
©

teaching and for your continuing professional
development. Publication enhances your profile as
a teacher and can improve your future job prospects
as a result. It’s also good for the teaching profession as
a whole; the exchange of ideas benefits all teachers.
Starting point
You may wish to submit shorter pieces to begin with.
We are very pleased to receive letters and suggestions for
publication, and contributions to the TALKBACK! and IT
WORKS IN PRACTICE sections of the magazine. Good,
innovative photocopiable materials are particularly welcome.
probably already know, we publish a wide range of features
and articles dealing with practical classroom issues,
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pedagogy, technology, language and linguistics, teaching
resources – and a lot more besides. Our aim is to be fresh and
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ENGLISH TEACHING CONFESSIONAL

ENGLISH TEACHING
Confessional Mario Rinvolucri relates how something a colleague told him
caused him to engage in 30 years of letter writing to his students.

ia
ed
M
nd
ga
hin
b lis
Pu

I
ion

n the mid 1970s, Carlos Maeztu, an American colleague, told young adults. It seemed too banal, this writing letters to the
me about a primary teacher he knew in New York who taught students; it also seemed artificial, as on an intensive course, I would
immigrant Hispanic children, often in classes of more than 30 see all of them in the flesh for four and a half hours a day.
vil

at a time. This man tried every methodological trick in the book It took a little time to get over these misgivings and to accept
to get these recalcitrant eight and nine year olds to write in a hefty extra workload, replying to the students’ letters (two to
English, as he was well aware that unless they learnt to read and three hours each day, five days a week). I launched the project
Pa

write with at least minimum fluency, these young ‘new Americans’ with a single letter to the whole class, talking about myself and
would end up sweeping the streets like their fathers or cleaning asking them each to reply.
other people’s houses like their mothers.
©

The single exercise that he found worked was writing them
individual, personal letters, to which they had to write replies. The
only rule was that in each letter, the writers had to give some new
information about themselves.
If you throw down this article and read no further, I think I
understand why: ‘That teacher must have been mad ... and with a
class of 30-plus difficult kids!’
Dramatic results
After five or six exchanges of letters with these students over two
weeks, I was amazed at how much I was learning about each
person – stuff it might have taken me a term to glean normally. The
students’ letters quickly had dramatic results for my teaching, as I
got a much clearer idea of each of them in the following areas:
■■ their language strengths and weaknesses;

Starting out
When Maeztu told me about this man, at first I did not feel motivated
to try the technique out, even though my classes at Pilgrims in the
UK were much smaller than his in New York: 12 to 14 teenagers and
■■ their life outside class, eg life in their host family;
■■ t heir level of homesickness, cultural amazement and
sometimes what they had learnt about the UK;
■■ how each person felt in the class group.

20 Issue 120 • January 2019 www.etprofessional.com


Though I could not analyse the data scientifically, I could
sense that the regular letter writing was drawing us closer
together as a group. Discipline in class was noticeably better.
The letter writing also radically changed my lesson
preparation. As I thought about the next day’s lessons, I was
much more aware of individual students than I had ever been
before. Looking back, I am pretty sure that the letter writing
stopped me doing certain exercises in a given class that I
would previously have happily charged ahead with, like a bull
in a china shop.
As time passed, I realised that writing letters to my
students was not just one more good teaching technique, but
that it gave me a framework that improved and strengthened
all areas of my teaching.
Looking back
Over the past two years (2017 and 2018), I have gone back
and re-read wodges of letters that I received from FCE
preparation classes as far back as the 1990s. As I sit and read
their different national and personal styles of handwriting, I am
gob-smacked by how their letters re-evoke the lives of those
classes from the deep past.
As I read the student letters again, I am delighted that I
maintained the strict rule that I would never attack their letters
with a red pen. I resolutely refused to correct their texts. A few
of my students were outraged by this behaviour and told me so,
in no uncertain terms. But I was absolutely right to model rich
lis
language for them and to divert their minds away from
mistakes-avoidance paranoia, which can be especially typical of
the more guilt-ridden students in exam classes. I can see from
b
their letters that they absorbed plenty of language from reading
Pu
and re-reading my letters to them.
Techniques that sprouted from the
correspondence
ion
Sensitive underlining
With some classes, I read the students’ individual letters to me
vil
and then replied in one letter to the whole class. At first, this did
seem to be a way of reducing my writing time. Colleagues,
however, especially women colleagues, nudged me into realising
Pa
that I had to be extra-vigilant not to quote something from a
student letter that the writer had intended only for my eyes. My
two solutions were a) to try to choose more sensitively, and b) to
©
ask the students to underline any parts of their letter they did not
want me to mention to the class. (This is one of many instances
where improvements in my teaching came thanks to colleagues’
comments, even if, at first, I accepted them only grudgingly, and
sometimes grumpily.)
I soon noticed that some students quickly scanned through
my letter and then got their dictionaries out, to be sure they fully
understood how I had reacted to their letter.
Vocabulary enrichment
As we got close to the dates of the examination for which they
were preparing, I would sometimes enrich my text/letter/missive
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ENGLISH TEACHING CONFESSIONAL
by offering three words in place of just one. I realised that, as the
exam loomed larger in their minds, the amassing of new lexis/
vocabulary/words might not be of much linguistic use but may
have assuaged/softened/dampened their exam jitters.
Letters home
Occasionally, I would suggest that the students translate one of
my letters that struck a particular chord with them, together with
a letter of their own to me that they were especially proud of, to
send back to their family, in order to help these people, who were
so important to them, to get a feel of what learning English in
Cambridge or Canterbury was like.
ia
Pair letter writing
ed
A really useful technique that grew out of students-to-teacher
letter writing was pair letter exchange. I would ‘string pair’ the
M
students (using nine pieces of string in a class of 18 students,
each person takes the end of a piece of string and is thus
randomly paired with another member of the class). I then told
nd
them that they had ten minutes to write a letter about anything
they liked to their string partner. After ten minutes, they
delivered their letters to their partners. They could then either
ga
answer the letter they received or freely write to someone else
of their choice in the class, and so on for the rest of the
45-minute period.
hin
Cross-class letter writing
Do you find that halfway through a term your classes can start
getting a little bored with each other’s company? To introduce
some variety, I would find a room large enough to take two
classes together, and seat them in two rows, with the students
of one class facing the students of the other. They started off
by each writing a letter to the person opposite them in the
other class. That way, everybody had someone new to
correspond with. After ten minutes they delivered their letters.
They could then write an answer to the letter they received
and, if there was time after that, they could write to anybody in
the other class that they wanted.

In a couple of years’ time, you may be able to read sets of my
students’ letters on the yet-to-be created Pilgrims-Bridge
School Archive website, run from Bratislava in Slovakia. Our
hope is that this Danube-side repository will grow in size under
the direction of Klaudia Bednarova and become a useful focal
point for people interested in relational, student-centred
learning and teaching. n
Mario Rinvolucri was the ‘dispatcher’ of
colleagues from Pilgrims Language School who
fanned out from Canterbury, UK, to do roving
EFL teacher training work in Europe and
beyond. He did this until he retired in 2012.
From 1999 until 2006, he edited Humanising
Language Teaching, the Pilgrims webzine.
mario.rinvolucri7@gmail.com
Issue 120 • January 2019 21
WRITING
Integrating writing
ga
hin
b lis
Pu
Mark Trevarton explores strategies for teaching writing alongside the other skills.
A
ion
central tenet of Communicative
Language Teaching is inclusion of all
four language skills across all levels. But
vil
in the case of writing, more so than with
the other skills, our approach is often
atomistic – writing is done in isolation. We generally
Pa
ask our students to write essays or compositions
individually; then we mark them, correct them and
return them. Does this sound familiar?
I realised that my own treatment of writing in
©
general English classes was in the form of
monolithic writing tasks like this. It wasn’t
particularly communicative (as there was no real
audience), and it wasn’t particularly engaging. So I
set out to devise some strategies for integrating
writing as a communicative class activity. I knew
from my own experience as a learner of Arabic
how beneficial writing can be when integrated with
other skills. For example, taking dictations from
recorded stories greatly helped my listening skills.
So this was another reason for integrating writing
rather than isolating it.
22 Issue 120 • January 2019
ia
ed
M
nd
In this article, I will present some strategies for
integrating writing with other skills and language, as
well as the benefits I noticed while trialling these
strategies in class.
Trial and error
My initial attempts to integrate writing as a means
of controlled practice for grammar or vocabulary
weren’t very communicative. The learners just wrote
to practise the target language and didn’t use their
texts again. From this, I realised two things:
Firstly, integrating writing successfully means
using and valuing the learners’ texts. Sharing their
texts gives them an audience and purpose for writing,
which motivates them to put pen to paper in the first
place, and to edit, correct and clean up their texts.
When using writing for controlled practice, it is a lot
more communicative if the learners write personalised
texts – or, at least, different texts from one another
– which they can then share with their classmates
afterwards by reading them aloud, swapping papers,
displaying them on the classroom walls, and so on.
www.etprofessional.com

Secondly, some lesson planning models work better
than others for integrating writing with other skills and
language teaching.
■■ Integrating writing in a task-based sequence (as described
by Dave and Jane Willis) works well. For example, in one
activity, my learners were each given a copy of a map with a
jail on it, and they had to decide how to escape (task stage),
then write down a description of their escape route
(planning stage). Next, working in groups, they each had to
read their escape routes to the others (reporting stage), who
plotted each route on the map and, when everyone’s route
had been plotted, decided on the best one. This integrated
listening, speaking and writing to create a purposeful
communicative activity.
■■ Integrating writing in a Test–Teach–Test sequence is also
effective. The learners can be ‘thrown in at the deep end’ with
a speaking task (first Test stage), such as telling a story based
on a series of pictures. Then, they can be taught any useful
vocabulary or grammar for the task (Teach stage), which
they put into practice by writing about the task (final Test
stage). This activity integrates speaking (focusing on the
students’ fluency), grammar/vocabulary input and writing
(focusing on the accuracy and complexity of the students’
language), producing a coherent sequence. The ‘Writing and
vocabulary’ activity described below uses this staging.
■■ When integrated with other skills, writing usually serves as a
pre-stage or post-stage – but it can also be a while-stage, in
the case of dictation.
lis
Integrating writing with different skills and different language
points brings different challenges and benefits. Here are some
b
effective integrated activities for you to add to your toolkit.
Pu
1 Writing and listening
Integrating writing with listening is synonymous with dictation.
The benefits of this are well-known: especially, promoting
ion
auditory discrimination and helping learners to notice the
correlations between spoken and written forms. The simple
task below uses writing to improve the learners’ bottom-up
vil
listening skills, and I have never seen my teenage learners
concentrate as hard on listening as they did in this activity!
Pa
Song dictation
1 Choose a verse of a song with clear lyrics that you think
your learners will like.
©
2 Tell the learners that you will play the song, and they should
write down everything they hear.
3 Play the song, pausing after each line, replaying a line if the
learners ask you to, until they have transcribed it all.
4 Play the whole verse for the learners to check what they
have written.
5 Get them to check their texts together and then against the
printed lyrics.
6 You could now go on to focus on the language in that verse
or a particular phonological feature, or you could use the
activity as a springboard into discussion of the lyrics.
www.etprofessional.com
WRITING
2 Writing and speaking
Writing can be very usefully integrated with speaking, giving
the learners thinking time to plan what they will say and how
they will say it. A great way to do this is to get them to write
their own roleplays. This creative activity also helps the
learners to link language studied in class to situations when
they might actually use it.
Write your own roleplay
1 Before class, prepare an example roleplay prompt card. You
can incorporate any target language points, contexts or
ia
content you like. For example, here is a simple roleplay
prompt I used in a lesson about making requests:
ed
Student A: You have just left the hospital and are going
home on a crowded train. You don’t feel well. Student B is
sitting down on the train. Ask if you can take his/her seat.
M
Student B: You have just had a really long day at work. You had
to stand for a long time on this crowded train, but two minutes
ago, a seat became available and you finally sat down.
nd
2 First, ask the learners to perform your roleplay, as an
example.
ga
3 Next, tell them to write their own roleplays prompt cards in
pairs. One learner writes the Student A prompt card, and the
other the Student B prompt card. This requires a great deal of
hin
coordination, so it generates a lot of task-focused speaking.
4 Help the learners to correct their writing, and check that it
focuses on the right situation or language (eg a request).
5 Ask the learners to swap prompt cards with another pair
and perform each other’s roleplays.
Writing can also be used after a speaking task. The learners can
be asked to write a short summary of a task as a way of
reporting back to the class. This focuses them on accurate use
of language, and can also be used to correct errors in their
more tangible written form.
3 Writing and reading
Reading lessons are usually made more communicative with
interspersed speaking stages. However, several typical pre-
reading or post-reading tasks can also be done in writing. The
learners can write their own comprehension questions for each
other, reconstruct parts of the text, or even make predictions in
writing. The activity below encourages purposeful reading of a
text in order to write a summary.
Written summaries
1 Choose an article of interest to your learners. It could be an
authentic text (eg from a newspaper or magazine) or taken
from a coursebook.
2 Engage the learners in the article, set a gist-reading task,
together with one other reading task, ideally one that
encourages them to examine the text’s organisation in more
detail, such as matching headings to paragraphs or adding
missing sentences to paragraphs.
3 You could focus on vocabulary or some other language
feature of the text at this point.
Issue 120 • January 2019 23
WRITING
Written summaries (continued)
4 Now tell the class that they are going to
summarise the text in 50 words. Elicit some
criteria by which to judge a good summary.
For example:
■■ Should you focus on major or minor points?
■■  hould you give your opinion or the author’s
S their story to a learner from another pair, noticing
opinion?
5 The learners write in pairs, consulting the text
and deciding how to word their summary
together.
6 When they have finished, ask them to read all the
other pairs’ texts and vote on which one best
summarises the article.
My teenage learners find this far more engaging
than typical comprehension activities, and it really
encourages them to apply all sorts of different
reading skills. They also ‘steal’ and appropriate
several useful pieces of vocabulary from the text,
ga
and practise paraphrasing and reporting.
4 Writing and vocabulary
hin
Our ultimate goal in any vocabulary lesson is to give
the learners several meaningful encounters with the
lexis and to enable them to personalise it. The
lis
following simple activity does this, integrating writing
with vocabulary, speaking and reading.
b
Pu
ion
vil
Pa
©
24 Issue 120 • January 2019
Picture sequence story
1 For this activity, you will need a series of pictures
that form a story, sequence or process, eg a
love story. Give these to the learners, and ask
them to work in pairs and to put them in order.
2 Split up the pairs and get each learner to tell
any similarities or differences.
3 Now feed in the target lexis for the story (eg, for a
love story: go on a first date, get married, etc).
ia
4 Ask the learners to work with their partner from
Stage 2 to write up a final version of the story,
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combining their favourite elements from each
of their original stories. They can incorporate
the new vocabulary and refine their language.
M
They can personalise the stories, inventing
names and other details. You can even make
a mid-task intervention and remove a few
nd
different pictures from each pair, with the result
that each pair’s story will turn out to be different.
To encourage use of the target language, you
could also ask the learners to underline those
phrases in their written stories.
5 Finally, get the learners to read each other’s stories
and vote on the most romantic, silliest, etc.
Writing gives the learners a chance to refine their
stories and use appropriate vocabulary, after
focusing on fluency in the initial stage.
5 Writing and grammar
Writing has several advantages over speaking when
learners are putting new language into use for the
first time. It slows down the process, giving them
thinking time. It also leaves a permanent record that
can be used for error correction or for them to recall
what they learnt at a later date.
I wish ... poems
1 Before the lesson, prepare a model poem using
the structure wish + past simple, or any other
structure you’re focusing on. It doesn’t have to
be anything fancy, just I wish …, I wish …, I wish
… and I wish … . (If wish + past simple is new to
your learners, you may wish to pre-teach it.)
2 Show the learners your poem and read it aloud.
Ideally, get them to interact with it. For example,
before sharing my poem, I told my learners that
it was called I wish ..., and asked them to guess
what I wished was different in my life.
3 Quickly analyse the poem: where you used the
target language, rhyming, etc.
4 Now tell the learners that they are going to write
their own ‘I wish’ poems and brainstorm ideas
for content together before they start writing.
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I wish ... poems (continued)
5 Afterwards, the learners read their poems aloud
to each other in a mingle, to find out whose
wishes they share and whose they don’t share.
6 After a suitable time, draw the activity to a
close and ask the learners to report to a partner
or the class about whose wishes are most like
their own.
Writing poems works as a practice activity for
many other language points, especially verb
tenses. It’s also great for building confidence in
pronunciation, as the learners recite their poem
several times in Step 5. Of course, creative
writing can take many forms, not just poetry,
and despite my initial reservations, I find my
learners really enjoy it.
6 Writing and phonology
Phonology is in everything we do with language.
Speaking (obviously), listening (as learners
distinguish sounds and grasp meanings
communicated through stress and intonation) and
reading and writing (when subvocalising texts or
spelling a word). Running dictation is a great way to
draw attention to phonological features in all four
skills. Here’s a little twist on the usual set-up.
Running ‘picture annotation’ dictation
Pu
1 Choose a picture with lots of things happening
in it, and write labels about it on slips of paper.
For example, a picture I used contained lots of
ion
contractions and weak forms, eg The woman
who’s looking at her phone is about to walk into
the lamp post.
vil
2 Pin the sentences up outside the classroom
and set up the running dictation. One learner is
the writer; the other is the runner, who goes
Pa
outside, reads a sentence, comes back and
reports it to the writer, who writes it down as a
label next to the picture. Then they swap roles
©
and continue until they have finished.
3 The running dictation is a bit of a ‘leading
them up the garden path’ strategy, really. Now
they’ve noticed the difficulty of pronouncing,
hearing, reading and writing the weak forms
and contractions, they are likely to appreciate
your help with these, so focus on them as
much as necessary.
4 For extra practice, the learners can write some
more sentences about the picture and dictate
them to each other.
www.etprofessional.com
WRITING
ia
ed
M
t t t
In many of the activities above, writing is in a
nd
mutually beneficial relationship with the skill it is
integrated with. In ‘Written summaries’, for
ga
example, the learners don’t only learn to write a
summary. They also skim, scan and infer meaning
and the author’s attitude from the text they are
reading more effectively and purposefully than with
hin
conventional comprehension exercises.
Writing is also a natural way of encouraging what
Dave and Jane Willis term ‘language focus’, where
lis
the learners concentrate on putting meaning into
words, and increasing the accuracy and complexity
b
of their message, without necessarily focusing on a
particular language form prescribed by the teacher.
Other benefits of integrating writing are that it
allows for more sensitivity to mental processes and
individual preferences in language learning. For
example, it can offer opportunities for thinking time,
creativity and visualising language. It also varies the
pace and tempo of lessons, especially in longer sessions.
So why not go ahead and integrate writing into
your other activities? The suggestions above are a
starting point, but the ways of doing this are endless.
However you do it, integrating writing ‘little and
often’, as opposed to ‘lots all at once’, can really help
learners’ progress throughout a language course. n
Willis, D and Willis, J Doing Task-based Teaching OUP
2007
Mark Trevarton has taught
English in Italy, France, Spain,
the UK and Thailand. He
currently works in Bangkok,
with one foot in teaching and
one foot in academic
management. He has recently
started blogging at
https://tesoltoolbox.com.
mtrevarton@hotmail.co.uk
Issue 120 • January 2019 25
TEACHING YOUNG LEARNERS

Fan
fiction

ia
ed
Benjamin Moorhouse gets his

M
learners to write adaptations of
original works of fiction.

nd
ga
hin
lis

H
ave you every wished to know what happened to the way to stimulate creativity and kickstart the writing process.
b

characters of your favourite story after the book Students can be tasked with making a story funnier, scarier,
ends? Or before it even began? Or perhaps more shorter, longer, more interesting, more educational, modern or
Pu

about the lives and adventures of secondary old-fashioned, or more personal to the students in the class. They
characters? Or what the story would be like if it was can adapt stories in a number of ways:
set in a different time or place? If so, you are not alone, and there ■■ Change the characters, setting, problem, solution or ending;
ion

is a growing and popular form of fiction that allows us to read and

■■  hange viewpoints; tell the story from a different
C
create adaptations of original works: fan fiction.
character’s perspective;
Fan fiction consists of works of fiction written by fans of an
■■ Add new details or characters;
original work (rather than by the original creator), using
vil

characters or settings from that work. It is an incredibly popular ■■ Add a modern or new item;
form of fiction today, as it has become easy to share these ■■ Extend the story forwards or backwards.
adaptations and creations on websites dedicated to it, such as
Pa

In this article, I will suggest some ways in which classic

www.fanfiction.net. These sites create a space and community storybooks can be used in the young language learner classroom
for fan ficition writers to share their work and get feedback on as a stimulus for writing, and the kinds of adaptations our
ways in which their stories can be improved. The ‘Harry Potter’ students can make to these texts to make them their own.
©

book series, for example, has nearly 9,000 adapted stories

written by its fans and posted on fanfiction.net.
While we might not expect young English language
learners to be adapting texts like ‘Harry Potter’, we can take
some of the ideas of fan fiction and bring them into our young
learner writing classroom.
Adapting storybooks
Young learners love storybooks. They are a rich and powerful way
to bring authentic language into the English language classroom,
either to supplement a coursebook or even as an alternative to
using a coursebook. In addition, reading storybooks is a great
Storybook: The Three Wishes
Adaptation: Change the problem
Young language learners love the book The Three Wishes. It tells
the story of a man who meets a fairy. The fairy grants him three
wishes. The man is hungry, so he first wishes for a string of
sausages. This leads to hilarious results.
Students can be asked to think of a different problem for the
man. Instead of being hungry, he could be tired, thirsty, bored,
sad or lonely. This would lead to different kinds of wishes and
some really creative stories.

26 Issue 120 • January 2019 www.etprofessional.com


Storybook: The Three Little Pigs
Adaptation: Alter the viewpoint
The Three Little Pigs is a classic tale that most students will
know. It tells the story of three pigs who build houses out of
straw, sticks and bricks. Each pig in turn gets visited by a big bad
wolf who threatens to ‘huff and puff and blow the house down’
– until he gets to the last house, where the pigs have a plan.
Students can be given the task of creating the same story
from the wolf’s perspective. Did he really want to eat the pigs?
Why was he visiting their houses? Could he be a vegetarian wolf?
After the students write their stories, you can read the book The
True Story of the Three Little Pigs by Jon Scieszka, which tells the
story from the wolf’s perspective. The students can then see how
their ideas could easily become a real book one day.
Storybook: Goldilocks and the
Three Bears
Adaptation: Extend the story
Everyone knows the story of Goldilocks and the three bears.
I think parents often read it to their children in order to teach
them to be well-behaved. But in the language classroom, it is
also good for teaching adjectives and the use of the adverb too.
The story is about a naughty girl called Goldilocks, who goes
into the three bears’ house when they are out for a walk. In the
house, she eats their porridge, finishing one of the bowls, sits
on their chairs, breaking one of them, and then tries out their
lis
beds, eventually falling asleep in the one belonging to baby
bear. The story ends with the bears coming home and finding
b
her, and Goldilocks running away.
Pu
I always feel there is more to tell here, and there are lots of
creative ways to continue the story. Students can be tasked with
extending the story, by being given question prompts, such as
What did Goldilocks do next? How did her parents react? What
ion
did the bears do? Did they look for Goldilocks? Did they call the
police? Through extending this story, the students can see how
they might think of sequels to other stories.
vil
Storybook: Little Red Riding Hood
Adaptation: Add a modern item
Pa
Little Red Riding Hood is another classic tale, set in a very
different time from today, when mothers would let their
children walk alone to their grandma’s house in the forest.
©
It tells the story of Little Red Riding Hood and her mission to
deliver some food to her grandma. Along the way, she meets
a wolf. The wolf learns of her errand and decides to eat
Little Red Riding Hood’s grandma. He then tries to eat Little
Red Riding Hood as well, but she is saved just in time by a
passing woodcutter.
I wonder how much of the story our students can relate to
today, with all the modern technology available. Therefore, it
could be fun to ask our learners to imagine that this story is set
in the modern day: What would happen if Little Red Riding
Hood had a mobile phone? Or a GPS tracker? Or a video
camera? What would the wolf do then? This can create a whole
www.etprofessional.com
TEACHING YOUNG LEARNERS
new way for the students to think about stories and the life and
times they represent.
Easy stories to adapt
The above four examples may seem quite challenging for some
of your English language learners, but there are some super-
simple stories that can be easily adapted with even beginner
English writers.
For example, the students can be asked to add an extra
character to any of the following books:
 rown Bear, Brown Bear, What Do You See? by Bill Martin
B
ia
■■
and Eric Carle – What other animals can they see? What
colour are those animals?
ed
■■ Dear Zoo by Rod Campbell – What other animals could the
zoo send? What are their characteristics?
M
■■  he Gingerbread Man (traditional folktale) – Who else could
T
the Gingerbread Man meet?
nd
The teacher can then create a class book with all the students’
adaptations in it. This can be shared and kept in the class library
for all the learners’ enjoyment.
ga
Benefits of story adaptation on
students’ writing development
hin
There are a number of benefits of getting students to adapt
storybooks in their writing lessons:
■■  he students will be writing in a familiar genre and will have
T
a social purpose in mind.
■■  hey can take ownership of their writing, and feel confident
T
and comfortable about being creative.
■■ It provides teachers with the opportunity to focus on
different aspects of the story, in order to build up the
students’ awareness of the story structure, purpose,
intended audience, features, language and vocabulary.
■■  tudents will feel pride in creating an original text that can
S
be shared within a positive writing environment.
t t t
With the shift from old literacies to new literacies, we are seeing a
change in who can be an author and how stories are shared and
read. By giving our students the chance to adapt classic stories,
they can be part of this change and, one day, may go on to create
famous works of fiction, fan or otherwise. n
Benjamin Luke Moorhouse is a lecturer in
the Division of English Language Education,
Faculty of Education at the University of
Hong Kong, where he teaches on initial
teacher education programmes. His research
interests include initial English language
teacher education and young learner English
language education.
benmoorh@hku.hk
Issue 120 • January 2019 27
IN THE CLASSROOM
Students’
stories
David Heathfield tells a tall tale from Turkey.
f all the characters who
appear in folk tales, none
can feature in as many
stories as Nasrudin Hodja,
the wise fool. Turkish people
claim that the Nasrudin tales, which can
also be categorised as jokes, are about a
real man who lived in Konja in Anatolia in
the 13th century. The tales spread
throughout the Islamic world from
Western China to North Africa and,
during the Ottoman Empire, into many
parts of Europe. Nasrudin is called several
different names – in Arabic-speaking
countries, he is usually known as Joha.
Nowadays, Nasrudin tales are shared
throughout the world. The one I have
most often been told by Turkish students
is ‘Borrowing the pan’, and I was told it
most recently by a young woman called
Emel Yalçın, who was a student in an
English class I was teaching in Exeter,
UK. In this story, Nasrudin proves
himself to be a cunning trickster.
ion
Below is a lesson plan I often follow,
in which the students act out the story in
pairs. This plan is easily adapted to use
vil
with short, simple two-character tales
from any culture. This particular story,
‘Borrowing the pan’, provides a good
Pa
opportunity for the students to learn and
practise greetings and requests.
‘Borrowing the pan’
©
Storytelling tip: Act it out
Rehearse acting out the story physically as
you tell it, switching between the two
characters: the trickster Nasrudin and his
easily-duped neighbour. It’s a good idea to
shift between two positions – this will help
your students when they act it out in pairs
afterwards. Mime knocking at the door
and picking up the big and the small pan,
and express the characters’ feelings. Make
sure the language you use is suitable for
your students’ level of English.
28 Issue 120 • January 2019
10
Before telling
Introduce Nasrudin Hodja to your
students, using the information above
and by showing an illustration. Let your
M
students know that they are going to
learn to tell a story by listening to you
and then acting it out.
nd
While telling
Be clear and simple, bearing in mind that
ga
the students are going to have to remember
and retell the story. Remember to act out
the tale as two distinct characters.
hin
After telling
Invite the students, in pairs, to act out
lis
the whole story in mime while you tell it
again. They will not be speaking, so
they should act with a lot of physical
b
expression.
Pu
Next, ask the students to mime the
story again, this time in total silence,
while they remember what happened.
After that, get the students to call
out key phrases they need in order to
retell the story, and write these up on the
board. For example:
Can I borrow your big pan?
Bring it back tomorrow.
Your big pan had a baby.
A pan cannot die.
Now get the students to repeat these
phrases chorally, in character and
with feeling.
Next, the pairs act out the story a
third time, this time speaking as the two
characters.
Finally, invite one or two pairs to
perform their version of the story in
front of the class. Afterwards, get the
other students to comment on what they
enjoyed about their classmates’
performance, eg voices, posture,
movement, gestures, humour, unexpected
details, creativity. Getting positive
feedback from peers is immensely
satisfying and motivating for students.
Further practice
This tale is short and simple so, having
acted out the story, the students are now
ready to retell it verbally. Make sure they
understand that they don’t need to use
exactly the same words you used, because
learning to tell a story is a process of
moving from imitating to ‘re-inventing’.
Ask the students to sit facing each other in
ia
pairs – one will be the storyteller and the
other the listener. The storytelling student
ed
should still use mimed actions to enhance
their telling of the story.
The listener can support the
storyteller by making a lot of eye
contact, and prompting with mimes or
verbally, if the storyteller wants them to.
It works best if the more confident
storyteller goes first. Then they can
exchange roles.
Over the following days, encourage
the students to retell the story as many
times as possible, both in the classroom
and beyond, with other students, family
members, friends and neighbours. They
can tell it both face to face and online.
They can even post a video of their most
successful version online.
t t t
You can watch a YouTube recording of a
class of ten-year-old students in Hamburg,
Germany, including three of Turkish
heritage, learning, retelling and performing
‘Borrowing the pan’ with me at www.
youtube.com/watch?v=CMM6lFLRyNw.
On the following page is the
transcription of that telling of the story,
which I adapted for students in their
second year of learning English. n
David Heathfield is
a freelance
storyteller, teacher
and teacher trainer.
He is the author of
Storytelling With
Our Students:
Techniques for
Telling Tales from
Around the World
and Spontaneous
Speaking: Drama Activities for Confidence
and Fluency, both published by DELTA
Publishing. He is a member of The
Creativity Group.
www.davidheathfield.co.uk
www.etprofessional.com
 IN THE CLASSROOM

Borrowing the pan

O
ne day, there was a knock at the door.
The neighbour opened the door and
there was Nasrudin.
‘Neighbour, can I borrow your big pan?’
‘Why?’
‘I’m having a party. I want to borrow your big
pan, please.’

ia
‘Yes,’ said the neighbour. ‘Here you are. Bring

ed
it back tomorrow. Goodbye.’
The next day, there was a knock at the door.

M
It was Nasrudin.
‘Neighbour, here is your big pan back.’
‘Thank you, Nasrudin. But inside the big pan

nd
there is now a small pan. Why?’
‘Ah,’ said Nasrudin, ‘while I had your big

ga
pan, your big pan had a baby. And the baby
goes with the big pan, so the big pan and the
small pan are yours.’
hin
‘Really? Thank you very much. Goodbye.’
A few days later there was another knock at
the door. The neighbour opened the door, and
there was Nasrudin.
lis

‘Neighbour,’ said Nasrudin, ‘can I borrow your

big pan again?’
b

‘Yes,’ said the neighbour. ‘Of course. Here you

Pu

are. Bring it back tomorrow.’

Did Nasrudin bring back the pan the next day?
‘Where is Nasrudin with my big pan?’
ion

The next day Nasrudin still didn’t bring back

the big pan.
‘Where’s that pan? Where is Nasrudin?’
vil

After three days, the neighbour was getting

angry. He went to Nasrudin’s house.
Pa

Nasrudin opened the door.

‘Neighbour,’ said Nasrudin, ‘can I help you?’
‘Nasrudin, you borrowed my pan. You didn’t
©

bring it back. Give me back my big pan. I want

my big pan!’
‘Oh, neighbour,’ said Nasrudin. ‘I’m sorry,
but your big pan died.’
‘What?’
‘Your big pan died. I’m sorry.’
‘What! A pan cannot die!’
‘Oh, neighbour. You were happy to believe that
a pan can have a baby. So why don’t you believe
that a pan can die? Goodbye!’

www.etprofessional.com Issue 120 • January 2019 29

 ETpedia Thousands of ideas for
“… a one-stop treasure trove English language teachers
of ideas. Especially useful
for new teachers, it should

ia
provide plenty of inspiration

ed
for last-minute classes …”
EL Gazette

M
nd
ga
hin
ETpedia Grammar
500 ideas and activities for teaching grammar
b lis

by Ceri Jones and Daniel Barber

Pu

Series Editor: John Hughes

Introducing your one-stop resource for teaching
ion

English language grammar.

vil

Organised into 50 units each containing 10 ideas,

ETpedia Grammar will:
Pa

■ save you planning time

©

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■ help you motivate students
■ anticipate difficulties students might have before they occur.
Suitable for English language teachers of all experience levels.
Bringing you inspiration, teaching tips, practical
advice, and engaging classroom activities across
eight volumes, there’s an ETpedia or two for you.

ia
ed
ETpedia TM

M
Materials Writing
500 ideas
for creating

nd
English language
materials

ga
hin
Lindsay Clandfield and John Hughes
lis

Series editor: John Hughes

www.myetpedia.com
b
Pu
ion
vil
Pa
©

Order now: www.pavpub.com/english-language/

E166-10-14

Email: info@etprofessional.com
Call our orders hotline: +44 (0)1273 434 943
 IT WORKS
IN PRACTICE
More tested lessons, suggestions, tips and techniques which have all
worked for ETp readers. Try them out for yourself – and then send us your
own contribution. The contributors to this issue will each receive a digital
subscription to Modern English Teacher.

ia
ed
SIX STRATEGIES FOR
STUDENTS’ NAMES

M
Jennifer Cochran, Cranston, USA
Do you have trouble remembering the names of your

nd
students? Here are some strategies that you might like to try:
1 Repeat the student’s name aloud and in your mind as
many times as possible when you first meet them.
2 Develop some type of visual or word association with
their names while picturing their faces.
ga
hin
3 If you meet with a group of the same students each day
or week, create a visual chart of their names and your
associations with these names.
4 Make a quick slideshow on your tablet or smartphone
lis

– adding a photo of each student together with their

name to each of your slides, and including an audio
b

recording of the name being said aloud for

pronunciation practice. This memory aid can also serve
Pu

as a great welcoming display for future parents’ Westerner) has difficulty pronouncing the names of the
evenings or for end-of-year celebrations. Surprisingly, students (often those from Asia), something which can be
it only takes a few minutes to put together. very embarrassing for teacher and student alike.
ion

5 Play the tried and true memory game where everyone
sits in a circle and says the names of the students on
their left and on their right as well as their own names.
vil
However, asking one or more students to choose a foreign
name is understandably a sensitive issue, one that might
make both the student and the teacher uncomfortable.
Every individual’s name is special to them, and something

This works well for large classes and can also be

played with the students repeating the name of the that is deeply tied to their identity. As a result, some
previous speaker and then choosing the next name at students may resent having to be referred to by a foreign
Pa

random around the class. name. While some students enjoy the novelty of picking an
alternative name (creating a sort of separate language
6 Empower the students by asking them to make their
learning identity or alter ego), many others consider this task
own suggestions for good ways to remember their
to be an additional inconvenience, whose only purpose is to
©

respective names. For instance, you could ask

something like What’s a cool word that rhymes
with your name? n
WHAT’S IN A NAME?
Jennifer Cochran, Cranston, USA
Technology has made the world of education an increasingly
global environment, and many online teaching institutions,
particularly those that involve teaching English to Chinese
students, adopt the practice of having the students choose
English names to be called in class. This also happens quite
often in conventional classrooms where the teacher (often a
make the language teacher’s job easier.
In order to create an environment in which the teacher
demonstrates the fact that they understand that choosing a
foreign name isn’t always an easy thing to do, it is a good
idea to offer to reverse roles: asking the students to choose
a foreign name for the teacher. The question ‘What do you
think would be a good [Chinese/Indonesian/Vietnamese]
name for me, if I had to choose – and why?’ opens up the
opportunity for a friendly discussion about words and their
associations. This small gesture, which many students find
amusing and empowering, gives the classroom a feeling of
mutual respect for cultural differences. n

32 Issue 120 • January 2019 www.etprofessional.com

 IT WORKS IN PRACTICE

COLOUR-CODED JIGSAW WHO IS IT?

READING
Mayuri Sooriyampola, Kandy, Sri Lanka
This is a ‘jigsaw reading’ game which is good for
developing the students’ reading skills. It can be used
with learners of all levels and with classes of any size.
Little teacher preparation is needed, but you will need
to find some short stories, the number and level
depending on your class, but all with the same
number of sentences.
Mayuri Sooriyampola, Kandy, Sri Lanka
Students in my language classes are often reluctant to speak
because they lack confidence. To boost their confidence, I use a
guessing game.
■■ The students are put into small groups of four or five.
■■  hey are told to choose one of their friends from the rest of the
T
class and to write sentences describing this person’s physical
appearance (with higher-level classes, perhaps also their
personal qualities).

ia
The game is ideal for a class of students who are ■■  hey read out their descriptions, and the other students have
T
bored with traditional reading lessons, as it improves to guess who it is. Each correct guess wins a point for their

ed
their reading skills in a fun way. All the students are group.
involved throughout, and the teacher’s role is minimised.
Before this activity, I give the class a list of vocabulary used to
The students also learn to work collaboratively in teams,

M
describe physical appearance. The list can be displayed on the
and speed-reading is promoted.
blackboard. For example:
If you like, the winning team can be identified as
Complexion: fair, dark, brown
the ‘reading wizards’ of the week, and they can be

nd
Hair: straight, wavy, normal, curly, black, brown
given badges to wear.
Height: tall, medium, short
1 Before the lesson, divide your chosen stories Build: small, big, average

into individual sentences and copy these onto
coloured paper strips, using a different colour
for each story.
2 Put the strips into a box, jumble them and place
the box (the sentence box) in the middle of the
classroom. (It is a good idea to arrange the
classroom so that the students’ desks form a
lis
ga
It is important to note that you need to be very careful when
encouraging students to describe each other’s physical
appearance, as there is the possibility of bullying or accidentally
hin
causing offence. If this is likely to be a problem, ask the students to
describe celebrities or people they all know well. Monitor carefully,
to make sure no one is including anything in their description that
might cause offence.

circle or semi-circle around the box.) Put the

The students’ main aim is to guess the identity of the person
titles of the stories, again on coloured strips,
being described, so they tend to forget that they are using English,
b

into a separate box (the title box).

as they race to earn some points for their group.
3 Ask the students to get into teams (one team
Pu

To provide even more speaking opportunities, you can get each

for each story) and appoint a leader for each
group to think of a well-known figure, either local or international,
team. Ask each leader to come and pick out a
and to produce two clues as to their identity. The other groups ask
strip from the title box.
questions to find out further information to enable them to guess
ion

4 Tell them to take their title strip back to their

who it is. Again, the race to win points distracts the students from
team and to discuss what they think the
the fact that they are using English, and can be a confidence
content of the story will be. Give them about
booster for shy students. n
vil

two to three minutes to do this.

5 Start the game by blowing a whistle or giving
some other signal. Each team sends one member
Pa

at a time to pick a strip from the sentence box.

Remind the students that they should only take a
strip that matches the colour of their title strip.
©

6 As each new strip arrives back at the team, they

work together to try to arrange them in order so
that they form a complete story. They must try
to place each strip in the exact or approximate
place before sending another member of the
team to get another strip. Every member of the
team must be given a chance to pick a
sentence from the box.
7 The team that finishes first wins – provided they
get all the sentences in the correct order. Once
they have arranged the story in order, they
paste it onto a piece of paper and can draw a
matching picture if they wish. n

www.etprofessional.com Issue 120 • January 2019 33

Reviews
How Vocabulary is Learned
by Stuart Webb and Paul Nation
OUP 2017
978-0-19-440355-9
A key element of any language course
is helping the learners to develop
vocabulary knowledge, so they can
operate effectively in English. Knowing
this truism is one thing, realising it in
practice is something else entirely. How
Vocabulary is Learned by Stuart Webb
and Paul Nation can help us help our
ion
learners. It is that rare thing, a book
that provides accessible theory and
discussion of research findings, while
vil
also exploring practical applications. It
gives equal focus to the why and the
how and, as such, is a must buy.
Pa
©
34 Issue 120 • January 2019
The volume starts by arguing that
some words are more important to
learners that others, an argument that
has foundations in lexical coverage.
Such coverage figures have allowed
researchers to create word lists that,
although seemingly out of fashion, still
absolutely have a place in the language
classroom. As well as introducing the
most up-to-date lists, Webb and Nation
discuss the pros and cons of various
lists. This helps readers effectively judge
whether a particular list is appropriate
M
for their specific context. Further
chapters deal with learning burden,
the incremental nature of lexical
nd
development, and conditions that
facilitate learning. Some readers might
be familiar with research in these areas,
ga
but take it from me, there will be
something new for most. For example,
while other books have dealt with
hin
extensive reading, the additional focus
on viewing here is particularly welcome,
as this is a major avenue of current
research and reflects typical learner
lis
behaviour. We know many of our
learners like watching videos, but
b
now we can set up such learning
opportunities to transform journeys
Pu
down even the deepest YouTube
black hole into an educationally
valuable experience.
As teachers, we want to provide our
learners with the best advice and
effective learning tasks. The discussion
on analysing vocabulary learning
activities will challenge us to consider
the extent to which we currently do
this. Most welcome is that, rather than
merely listing effective activities, the
rationale for each provides a model
against which readers can apply a
similarly robust analysis of the
activities they currently use. Thus,
readers can generalise the principles
exampled in this book to their own
context, which is likely to have
ia
significant practical benefits.
Discussions of best practice seem to
ed
go hand in hand with colleagues claiming
‘but it wouldn’t work in my context’.
Thankfully, Webb and Nation saw this
coming! They have prepared evidenced
advice on best practice for a range of
contexts: EFL, ESL, young learners, large
classes, beginners, advanced learners,
intensive courses, and more besides. We
know that consideration of context is
vital to the success of any pedagogical
intervention, and readers will be able to
incorporate the nuggets gained from this
book into their classes, irrespective of the
particular context in which they work.
This includes both classroom-based tasks
to foster lexical development, as well as
strategy work to facilitate sustainable
learning. This is a vital area to consider if
we want our learners to be independent,
autonomous, life-long students.
Webb and Nation, who have years of
teaching experience between them,
understand the questions that many
practitioners have: Should I use L1 in the
classroom? How can I utilise corpora to
enhance learning? etc. This book is
formed from and around those questions
and, as such, strikes at the heart of the
issues we find most pressing. Overall,
this book covers key areas related to
vocabulary learning and teaching. It
presents findings and research-based
advice in an accessible manner. As a
result, it is a valuable professional
development tool, either for an
individual who wants a better foundation
in this important area, or as the centre
of an institutional development
programme. It will make an important
addition to our bookshelves and is a
must for any conscientious teacher.
Sam Barclay
Nottingham, UK
www.etprofessional.com

Best Practices for Blended
Learning
by Pete Sharma and Barney Barrett
Pavilion 2018
978-1-911028-84-0
In this book, Pete Sharma and Barney
Barrett have attempted to address the
challenges that institutions and
practitioners face when trying to
implement a blended learning (BL)
course. The pair recognise that one of
the core issues at the heart of the BL
approach is the absence of definitive
rules when it comes to its effective
implementation. As a result, teachers
and institutions can be quickly
overwhelmed by the sheer number of
approaches and potential methodologies
that exist. There is little doubt that there
is an established need for a book that
attempts to pull all these issues together
vil
and offer concise and informed guidance
for those looking to set up a BL course.
Pa
The book is split into three sections,
the first opening with an overview of what
exactly is meant by the term blended
learning. From there, the book presents a
©
practical framework for those wishing to
set up a BL course, as well as describing
the main platforms available. The second
section is more practical, as Sharma and
Barrett introduce 20 practical ideas for BL,
which cover everything from grammar and
vocabulary to assessment. Finally, the third
section looks at the future of BL and gives
some tips for teacher training, before
including some photocopiable material.
One of the most useful aspects of the
book, for those new to the concept of BL,
www.etprofessional.com
REVIEWS
is the way in which it explains key terms,
particularly the main models employed on
a BL course. The ‘%’ model refers to the
percentage of the course which is
supported by online work. For example,
on a 70–30 course, 30% of the learning is
done online. This can increase to a hybrid
course (50–50) or up to 100% on an online
course. Implementing a ‘dual track’
approach means that students have 24/7
online access to the online materials that
supplement their taught classroom
ia
materials. These materials may or may not
be related to each other, but both have a
ed
similarly holistic learning aim. Arguably, out and use instantly may be a little
the most well-known model is the ‘flipped disappointed. Many of these activities
M
classroom’ approach, where the online ask for an awful lot of commitment,
learning materials are introduced before often far beyond what can reasonably be
the lesson starts, and are then utilised in expected of a busy teacher. For instance,
nd
the classroom, with the focus being on ideas such as recording screencasts or
deepening understanding of what has been sending emails of sentences to practise at
studied before the lesson. home all involve quite a lot of
ga
preparation and continual monitoring.
Sharma and Barrett understand that
there are various challenges facing There is a telling part in the ‘Tips for
institutions who wish to set up a BL teacher trainers’ chapter towards the end
hin
course, and they deal with each of them of the book that proves this point. When
in turn. They identify the fact that discussing a comment from an attendee
employing a successful blended learning at a training session who questioned the
component takes a great deal of time usefulness of the activities as they
lis
and effort, and also acknowledge other wouldn’t have time to implement them,
considerations that need to be taken Sharma and Barrett interpret this as
b
into account, such as appropriacy and more of a reflection of the limitations of
the need for training for teachers and that teacher’s circumstances rather than
Pu
students alike. Their framework for any failing in the training. However,
creating a BL course is very useful, as it taken more objectively, the comment
allows practitioners and institutions to identifies an inherent problem with the
ion
work systematically through four clear BL approach as a whole: it is more
stages that the authors believe will help applicable to higher education
to create a successful BL course. establishments with the time, money and
inclination to implement it, and many
Where the book really excels is in
activities are simply impractical for
the easily digestible overviews of the
teachers working in language schools, as
various platforms available. From
they would take too much time to set up
publisher-produced platforms to
and monitor. Those who advocate BL
learning management systems, such as
need to recognise the work pressures and
Blackboard and Moodle, to Google
time constraints on the majority of
Classroom, each one is explained in
teachers working in secondary education
detail with a summary of their
and language schools.
fundamental advantages and
disadvantages. Coupled with individual I believe that, used correctly and
case studies, these chapters in the book effectively, a BL approach certainly has
allow the reader to reach an informed a place in the ELT sector and, for
decision about which platform would certain institutions, BL platforms
work best in their situation. afford a range of fresh and innovative
teaching opportunities. That said, this
The practical ideas that make up the
book is a good introduction to the
second section are useful for those who
difficult topic of blended learning.
want ideas to use with learning
management systems. However, those Paul Carr
looking for activities that they can pick Exeter, UK
Issue 120 • January 2019 35
 SCRAPBOOK Gems, titbits, puzzles, foibles, quirks, bits & pieces, quotations,
snippets, odds & ends, what you will
There are two main types of skill – real and imaginary.
The real kind is self-evident in the sometimes apparently magical
achievement of an apparently ordinary human being. For
instance, I don’t know if you have ever really looked at a large

ia
wooden barrel, but it is made of a number of very carefully
shaped pieces of wood. Each piece is widest in the middle, and

ed
tapers at the top and the bottom. In addition, because each
piece is part of a circular container, its edges need to be angled,
also very precisely, to achieve a perfect and watertight (or, more

M
often, ‘winetight’) fit. A cooper is the person who constructs this
A cooper making a barrel
wonderful item – which is made all the more wondrous because
he or she makes each piece by eye. Now that is skill!

nd
The imaginary kind is when someone claims to be able to do something but actually can’t. This is
sometimes hubris, which leads them to boast that their abilities are greater than they really are, and

ga
sometimes it is simply optimism.
There is an excruciating sketch by British comedian Catherine Tate where, in response to a crisis in the
office, she volunteers her services as a translator in a major international business meeting. When asked
hin
to translate to representatives of half a dozen or so different nationalities, she produces the sort of
wordless noises used to lampoon the cadences of the various languages (the lilting pitch of Scandinavian
languages, for instance). I find it truly agonising, if fascinating, to watch.
lis

Impressive Impressive professional skills

b

speaking skills Some people seem genuinely A rather more unusual claim came
Pu

oblivious to common sense when from American pro-wrestler ‘Stone

The holder of the Guinness submitting their CV (curriculum vitae) Cold’ Steve Austin:
World Record for the fastest with a job application. These typically ‘Driving a forklift is kind of like riding
ion

female speaker is New Yorker
Fran Capo, who can say 11
words per second. At such a
high rate of speech, you might
vil
include a section where skills are a bicycle. You’ve either got forklift
listed. ‘Proficiency in the use of skills or you don’t, and I can remove
Microsoft Office’ can, indeed, be a somebody’s molars with a forklift.’
valuable asset, but how about

Make sense of that, if you can! I

not always (if ever) be able to
understand what she is saying.
But comprehensibility is
Pa
‘dodging potholes’? And would you
would have thought that the ability
really want to work for someone who
to remove somebody’s teeth with a
didn’t value your ‘ability to make

forklift would be more indicative of

obviously not what she was
aiming for when she was trying
to break the previous record.
©
margaritas’? Other unusual (or grossly
a lack of skill.
exaggerated) skills that have been
reported on CVs include:

She says she spoke very fast, Fantastic ability in multi-tasting.

even as a child.
However, even more
incomprehensible may be
Nada Bojkovic of Sweden, who
holds the record for the most
words spoken backwards in
one minute (71). This puzzling
feat was achieved at the
Nordstan Shopping Mall in
Gothenburg, Sweden, on the
24th November, 2007.
I would like to assure you that I am
hardly working.
Speak English and Spinach.
Perfectionist with a keen I for details.
I can type without looking at
thekeyboard.
I am a rabid typist.
Quick learner, good at mats and
speling.
I am a perfectionist and rarely if if
ever forget details.
Do you speak Spinach?

36 Issue 120 • January 2019 www.etprofessional.com

 Impressive mental skills
Back to the possessors of real skills – it isn’t long before
one comes up against those endowed with truly
extraordinary abilities.
Daniel Tammet is a high-functioning autistic savant, born
with a form of epilepsy, who has a phenomenal facility for
performing mathematical calculations in his head,
memorising sequences and learning languages.
He experiences numbers as colours or sensations in a
well-known form of synaesthesia. However, the detail and
specificity of his mental imagery of numbers is unique. In his
mind, he says, each number up to 10,000 has its own
particular shape and feel: apparently his visual image of 289 is
Impressive listening skills
Another extraordinary talent is that of Ben Underwood. Blind
from the age of three, when he lost both his eyes to cancer, he
learnt to play basketball, ride a bicycle, and otherwise live a
very normal life. He achieved this by teaching himself to use
echo location (similar to the skill used by bats to fly in the dark)
to find his way around the world. He would make a series of
short clicks with his mouth, which would bounce back from
objects around him. Amazingly, his ears would pick up these
tiny echoes, which would let him know where the objects were
and even what they were made of. Those who saw him move
around with great confidence would never have known he was
unable to see perfectly. Sadly, the cancer that took away his

ia
eyesight also took away his life when he was 16.
particularly ugly, whereas he finds 333 particularly attractive.
When it comes to calculations, he ‘sees’ the results in the Ben Underwood is not the only blind person to have had this

ed
form of landscapes, and can ‘sense’ whether a number is skill. Daniel Kish, who also learnt echo location as a child, now
prime or composite. Tammet is not only able to describe these teaches it to other blind people so that they can get out and

visions verbally, but he also does paintings of them.
While most people can calculate pi to around four decimal
places (3.1415), Tammet holds the European record for
M
experience the wonders of the natural world that sighted
people too often take for granted. He regularly leads blind
teenagers on hiking and mountain biking trips.

nd
memorising and recounting it to 22,514 digits – a feat he In the words of Paul
managed in just over five hours. Watson, the Canadian
environmentalist:
He also speaks a variety of languages, including English,

ga
‘Follow your dreams
French, Finnish, German, Spanish, Lithuanian, Romanian,
and use your natural-
Estonian, Icelandic, Welsh and Esperanto. He particularly
born talents and skills
likes Estonian, because it is rich in vowels. Tammet is
hin
to make this a better
capable of learning new languages very quickly. He was
world for tomorrow.’
once challenged to learn Icelandic in one week for a
A nice aspiration ...
television documentary. Seven days later, he appeared on
lis

television conversing fluently in Icelandic.

b

Learn a new skill

Pu

Why not find out what skills your students possess? They may surprise you with the
things they can do! On the following page is a worksheet about learning and teaching
new skills, which practises imperatives and giving instructions. Make one copy of the
ion

worksheet for each student.

■■ In Activity 1, the students watch a ‘how to’ video on YouTube, in which a woman
Impressive demonstrates three different ways of peeling a boiled egg in under ten seconds. They
vil

physical skills predict the verbs that they will hear, then complete gapped sentences. You will find
the video at www.youtube.com/watch?v=_tuhC9B73zw.
Renowned rock climber Alex ■■  ctivity 2 requires cards with the instructions for balancing a spoon on your nose and
A
Pa

Honnold once said: ‘I suppose being for folding a T-shirt in under five seconds. These are downloadable from the ETp
a bit of an antisocial weirdo definitely website at www.etprofessional.com/media/32280/etp-120_onlineresource_
honed my skills as a soloist. It gave page36_ianwaringgreen.pdf. You might like to bring a T-shirt and a spoon to class, so
©

me a lot more opportunities to solo
lots of easy routes, which in turn
broadened my comfort zone quite a
bit and has allowed me to climb the
harder things without a rope that I’ve
done now.’
These ‘harder things without a rope’
include climbing the 3,000-plus feet
of the sheer face of El Capitan, a
rock formation in Yosemite National
Park, USA, without any kind of
safety equipment – now that is a
skill, but not one that I yearn after!
that the students can see if the instructions work, once they have put them in the
correct order. Draw their attention to the use of the imperative in these instructions.
■■  hile the students are doing Activity 3 (writing instructions for their own skill), monitor
W
and give help with vocabulary. Make sure the students’ instructions are clear and that
they use the imperative correctly.
■■ In Activity 4, encourage the students to teach their skills to their classmates. You can
do this in class, with the students taking turns to demonstrate and give instructions to
the rest. Alternatively, ask them to produce their own ‘how to’ videos to teach each
other their skills.
Answers to Activity 1
She uses blow, bring, crack, insert, peel, roll (as a noun), rotate, remove and tap.
1 tap, roll; 2 Peel; 3 insert; 4 remove; 5 bring, blow

Scrapbook compiled by Ian Waring Green

www.etprofessional.com Issue 120 • January 2019 37

 Learn a new skill
1 You are going to watch a video in which a woman demonstrates three different ways to peel a
hard-boiled egg in under ten seconds. Which of these verbs do you think she will use?

blow bring crack hit insert peel roll rotate remove tap throw

Now watch the video and use words from the box above to complete these sentences.

1 Gently _____________ your egg on the counter and give it a ______________.

ia
ed
2 _____________ off about the size of a quarter*.

M
3 Taking a small teaspoon, _____________ it under the shell and start rotating.

4 Tap the top of the egg, and you’re going to _____________ a bit of the shell, about the size of a dime**.

nd
5 Now _____________ the egg to your mouth like this, and you’re going to _____________ .

* An American 25 cent coin ga

hin
** An American 10 cent coin

2 Your teacher will give you the instructions for two more skills: Balancing a spoon on your nose, and
folding a T-shirt in under five seconds. Decide which instructions belong with which skill, and put
lis

them in order.
b

3 What special skills and abilities do you have? Could you teach one of them to your friends?
Pu

Decide what words you will need to use and write out your instructions. You may find it helpful to use
the words in the box.
ion

First, ... Then, ... Make sure you ... Finally, ...
vil
Pa
©

4 Use your instructions to teach your skill to your friends. If you like, make a video in which you
demonstrate your skill, giving your instructions at the same time.

38 Issue 120 • January 2019 www.etprofessional.com

 VOCABULARY

Systematic
word learning 1
I

ia
Charles f you asked motivated, engaged learners which

ed
part of language learning was the most
Jannuzi challenging, many would probably say vocabulary.
offers a Such students would probably want to master the

M
template for sort of vocabulary that they would need in order
active word to get a high score on tests like TOEFL, TOEIC or
IELTS. They might also hope to be more capable of
study.

nd
expressing their ideas when they communicate in
English in real interactions (conversations, emails,
SMS posts, video chats, etc).
The issue of vocabulary learning relates closely
to that of memory. Anyone who has struggled to
learn a foreign language knows the challenge:
ga
hin
despite intensive study and review of key
vocabulary, it turns out to be impossible to recall it
fast enough for use in any real-time situation.
lis

Are there ways in which classroom teachers can

help their students to study, learn, review, revise
and practise vocabulary more effectively? In this
b

article, I will present a technique that I have

Pu

devised to enable and support the active learning smoothly through most of their university lives.
of more vocabulary. However, they are not very useful for making their
English language learning more effective.
Background
ion

Second, even if the students are guided into

Most of my university EFL students here in Japan changing their language study habits, many will lose
do not have printed English–Japanese or Japanese– patience before they can master new techniques,
English dictionaries – and very few have dedicated apply them over the long term and reap the benefits.
vil

electronic dictionaries. The rise of the smartphone

as the one indispensable consumer electronic device A word template
Pa

among university students has led to the severe

During a five-year period (2011–2016), I tried
decline of other electronic gadgets. However, most
various ways to get my students to organise and
of the students do have one thing in common for
expand their vocabulary studies. Asking them to
electronically-assisted word study: dictionary apps
©

keep a vocabulary notebook resulted in arbitrary

installed on their smartphones.
A lack of proper dictionaries isn’t the only
problem when trying to boost word study among
the students. I am convinced that learning a lot
more vocabulary is what my students need, and that
success at vocabulary learning would probably help
to increase their motivation levels. However, it is not
a simple issue to address.
First, it’s very hard to get students at this stage
in their education and life to change their learning
and study habits. Students’ routines are highly
schematised and work well for getting them
word lists of English words and their Japanese
translations stranded on the fixed pages of their
notebooks. The words couldn’t be re-ordered
alphabetically, semantically or by parts of speech.
The opposite direction from notebooks led to the
students using sets of small ‘flashcards’ kept
together on a ring that could be opened and closed.
This system proved more flexible than the
notebooks, but the small size of the cards meant
that there was one side with an English word and
the flip side with only one or two Japanese
translations. Study and review with the flashcard

www.etprofessional.com Issue 120 • January 2019 39

VOCABULARY
sets mostly resulted in nothing more than a passing
familiarisation with the words: there simply wasn’t
enough space for the sort of information needed for
in-depth study and review. The students reported
that they were more likely to remember the Japanese
translations and forget all but the vaguest
impression of the English words. It wasn’t enough
to match an English item with one or two Japanese
translations. Most words are polysemous and have
multiple meanings, nuances and uses. On the other
hand, I felt it best to avoid bogging the students
down in minutiae that wouldn’t really help them
learn and revise their vocabulary. Clearly, a different
template for vocabulary learning was needed.
Taking what I had learnt from these five years of
trial-and-error, in early 2017, I asked myself what I
would want on a word study card or form and drew
ga
hin
lis
b
Pu
ion
Figure 1 Word card template with explanation of its sections
vil
Pa
©
Figure 2 Example word card for the verb ‘to negotiate’
40 Issue 120 • January 2019
up a new template. I tested it out with my own
Japanese studies. After using it for about 25 Japanese
words, I could see how the new, larger cards worked
better than either a bound notebook or a set of small
flashcards. The 25 cards could be consolidated into
one pack and steadily expanded and constantly
reorganised alphabetically (the Japanese words were
also written in Roman letters for that purpose). After
some adjustments, I came up with a template that
can be done uniformly, word after word, by all
the students. A copy which has the purpose of
the different sections of the card marked is shown
ia
in Figure 1, and a blank photocopiable version
can be downloaded from the ETp website at
ed
www.etprofessional.com/media/32279/etp-120_
onlineresource_page39_charlesjannuzi.pdf. Figure 2
M
shows an example card for the verb ‘to negotiate’.
Completing the cards
nd
For the most part, the word cards are completed as
homework. The word template is introduced in the
first meeting of the course. (It is helpful to provide
examples in several consecutive classes to get the
students going.) For example, I introduce the
students to what they do with the word cards in the
first class with an example verb. They then try to
do a card during the same class for another verb.
I assign them all the same verb, so that they can
compare and contrast their efforts with those of
their classmates. In the next class, I demonstrate
filling in a word card for a noun, and the students
do one more card for another noun. In the third
class, I demonstrate filling in cards for an adjective
and for its adverb form. The students then do two
cards for another adjective–adverb pair.
Once the students understand what to do with
the cards, completing them is supposed to continue
as homework and independent study. For their
cards, the students can choose vocabulary from the
textbook, the current lesson, the next lesson, their
university life (eg other courses), etc. As their
collection grows, they can review the cards every day
as an aid to memory.
However, many students aren’t ready for
independent learning. Their English courses are
required, so they aren’t necessarily there because
they want to be. They are used to doing
homework only if the teacher demands it. So if
the teacher does not enforce the work and use it
for grading, many students will ignore it.
Anticipating this, I assign specific quotas. For
example, by the end of the third class, all the
students have to have at least six cards (copies of
the three I demonstrated, three of the ones they
did in class). By the fourth class, they must have
completed two cards on their own. Then for the
next class, the quota is doubled. I increase the
www.etprofessional.com

quotas until the time required for word study
between each class is about one hour. Quotas
make it possible to check for minimum
compliance: I can look at a pack of cards and
quickly see if a student has at least done the
minimum number up to that point in the course.
Once the packs get beyond 30 cards or so, I
show the students how to organise them
alphabetically and how to bind them. I recommend
a locking metal ring through a hole in the upper-left
corner or a large binder clip to clamp the pack.
Active learning to increase
compliance
One way to increase compliance is to use a basic
‘active learning’ technique: make the students
responsible for some of the teaching. For example,
I choose several students to teach the entire class
one of the words that they have been working on.
They can copy their word cards onto enlarged
templates on the board. This is also a good time
for me to make improvements and suggestions in
terms of how the cards can be used. The board
space in most of my classrooms allows for the
simultaneous presentation of four words. Over the
first month of a course, all the students will have
taught at least one word that they have been
studying to the rest of the class. This makes it clear
that this is a required task, and one that is to be
taken seriously. It also helps me to give further
b
guidance and correction on how to do the cards.
All the students can then add to their own
Pu
collections by copying the ones on the board.
Using the cards for evaluation
ion
The cards can be used to help evaluate the
students. For example, you could ask them to
submit their pack of cards at the end of the
vil
semester and assign them a grade based on their
efforts. Since I have to teach large numbers of
students, collecting so many cards in order to
Pa
grade them proved too time-consuming and
logistically overwhelming. Instead, I now check a
certain number of students each class and make it
a part of the classroom-participation grade. If any
©
students are behind the quota, haven’t put their
pack into alphabetical order or aren’t prepared to
teach a new word, they will get lower classroom-
participation marks for that class.
Perhaps the best use of the cards, though,
is to note down a handful of the words that the
students themselves have selected to teach the
class each week. These can then be recycled in
mid-term and final tests. All the students will have
had the chance to study the words, but this
technique tends to reward the serious students
who are actively engaged in the task, week after
www.etprofessional.com
VOCABULARY
week, both during class and while doing
homework. So now I use the vocabulary template
as a learner-centred ‘filter’ to help me choose what
words will feature in the tests for a course.
t t t
Getting my students to complete the word study
cards on a regular basis is not without difficulties.
Many of my courses are required English, where the
students’ language proficiency is limited and their
ia
motivation is low. Some students resist, simply
because it entails doing more homework than they
ed
are used to doing for an English course. But there
are other issues as well. A lot of students don’t have
M
dictionaries or know how to use them (Japanese–
English and English–English ones being mostly
outside their experience).
nd
Nor do they always understand the separate
sections of the word study template, even if this is
explained in Japanese (for example, the concepts of
ga
parts of speech and their inflections, common
lexical derivations, English-language definitions,
collocations, etc). I have found that many students
hin
are unable to put a pack of word cards into
alphabetical order. And many have reported extreme
difficulties in using online word study resources (like
translators and dictionaries).
lis
It’s an insidious temptation for teachers to avoid
teaching difficult but worthwhile learning tasks
because training the students to do them is too
much bother. Teachers tend to look for quick and
easy solutions to prevent too much stress or
misunderstandings with their students. How do you
teach English (in English) when the students have
limited proficiency and don’t understand much
English? Often we are hesitant to endure the
students’ bafflement, reluctance and opposition.
Despite these hazards, I have persevered at getting
my students to study vocabulary more
systematically using the word template.
In the next article in this series, I will look more
closely at the various issues that have arisen with my
students, and some possible solutions. The discussion
will also feature some online resources that have
helped greatly in overcoming the difficulties. n
Charles Jannuzi has taught
English in Japan since 1989 and
at the University of Fukui since
1994. He spends much of his
free time with 30 cats and
publishes several blogs,
including ELT in Japan (www.
eltinjapan.blogspot.com). He is
co-author of Core English for
Global Communication,
published by Asahi Press.
jannuzi@gmail.com
Issue 120 • January 2019 41
IN THE CLASSROOM

Let’s revise!
Martin Bastkowski recommends 12 activities
to remind students of things they have learnt.

I
guess we have all experienced the following scenario: You
introduced a new topic the day before, and your learners

ia
have already forgotten all about it. What can you do? How
can you help them brush up on that forgotten material?

ed
To counter this problem, I always start my lessons with a
revision slot in which we refresh and reactivate previously-learnt

M
topics together as a class.
In this article, I would like to introduce a range of activities
that are, to my mind, very efficient when it comes to revising

nd
content. (The focus on content can, of course, be changed to a
focus on language.)
If you do these activities with your learners on a regular
basis, they will make fast progress, especially if you revise the
content every single lesson in a different way.
ga
hin
Revision activities
In general, these revision activities should be done at the
beginning of a lesson, and they should not last longer than ten ■■ Tell the learners to describe to their partners six things they
lis

minutes. It is useful not only to revise the last lesson, but also a would definitely take on a trip to New York City.
couple of earlier lessons, in order to connect different topics
■■ Monitor, and encourage them to give reasons for their choices.
with each other. In order to explain each revision activity best,
b

I will use the example topic of the USA. 3 Speed dating

Pu

You should aim to include as many learners as possible in This is an activity that I introduced in my article in Issue 103
each revision activity. of ETp. I would like to have a quick look at it again here, as it
is very effective for revision.
1 Five-finger brainstorming
ion

■■ Ask the learners to form two lines and face each other in
■■ Ask the learners to draw outlines of their hand(s) on a sheet
pairs.
of paper.
■■ Give them a topic, statement or question which they have to
■■ Tell them that now they have to write five keywords about a
vil

discuss for 20 seconds (eg Which part of the USA would you
certain topic, one on each finger. For example, Name five
like to go to and why?).
things you would like to do and see in New York City.
■■ When the time is up, tell all the learners in one of the lines to
Pa

■■ If you get the learners to draw both their hands, you can choose
move one step to their right and face a new partner.
a topic where both positive and negative aspects can be listed and
contrasted. For example, you could ask them to write on one of ■■ Then give them a new topic or question (eg What is your
their drawings five pros of living in big cities like New York, and opinion of the current president of the USA?).
©

on the other five cons of living in big cities like New York.
■■ After writing down the items on their hand drawings, the
learners can elaborate on their ideas with a partner, and then
share their ideas with the whole class.
2 Pairwork
Sometimes, simple traditional methods such as pairwork
discussions are quite effective for revision.
■■ Provide a topic for the learners to talk about with a partner.
In order to get them to speak to a variety of people, you
can tell them that they have to pair up with somebody who
is not sitting near them.
4 Buzz groups
Using a ‘buzz group’ discussion activity is especially useful for
a quick exchange of information, with all the participants
contributing something to the topic. Topics that work best are
quite controversial ones, where the learners have to come to a
conclusion or some sort of agreement.
■■ Put the learners into groups of three or four.
■■ Give each group a different topic and ask them to discuss it.
For example, Discuss the effects of Hollywood stars on
teenagers. Do these stars set a positive or negative example?
■■ Ask each group to report back to the class on their discussion.

42 Issue 120 • January 2019 www.etprofessional.com

 IN THE CLASSROOM

5 Give me five! ■■ Change the participants and play another round.

This activity can be used to collect a limited amount of ■■ If no participant can answer a question, you can involve the
information very fast on a given topic. other learners who are sitting in the audience.
■■ Give the learners prompts, such as Give me five places
10 Talking while walking
in the USA you would like to visit or Give me five tall
buildings in the USA. This is another movement-based activity.
■■ For each prompt, ask them to name five things that come ■■ Put the learners in pairs and establish a set path (eg from the
immediately to their minds. classroom door to one corner of the room).
■■ Tell them that while they are walking this path, they have to
6 Twenty-second speeches talk about a given topic (eg Talk about ‘the American dream’).
■■ Put the learners into pairs, A and B. ■■ Change the participants after each round.

ia
■■ Give them a topic to talk about (eg Your favourite American
film) and explain that, first, A has to talk about the topic for 11 Keyword presentations

ed
20 seconds. Afterwards, B does the same. This is quite a demanding activity.
■■ Get feedback from the class and compare results. You can ■■ Give the learners a set of five or six keywords on your chosen

also let A present what B talked about, and vice versa.
7 True or false?
A broad range of topics can be covered in this activity.
M
topic (eg for the topic The MeToo movement, you could have
as keywords Harvey Weinstein, women’s rights, hashtag,
assault, social media).

nd
■■ Tell the learners that they have to use these keywords in a
■■ Read out to the whole class a series of statements on your short presentation on the topic. All the keywords must be
chosen topic(s), one after another. Make some of them true included and used in a coherent way.

and others false.
■■ Ask the learners to note down whether each statement is
true or false and to correct any false statements right away.
For example:
There are 51 states in the USA. (false – 50)
The capital city is Washington, DC. (true)
Los Angeles is known as The Big Apple.
lis
ga
12 Swap-it cards
You can cover a wide range of topics using this activity. In
hin
addition, everybody is involved and actively participating.
■■ Ask each learner to create a card with a question on it (eg
What was New York called before it was called New York?).

■■ They then walk around the classroom, find a partner and

(false – New York City) take turns asking and answering the questions on their cards.
There are ten stripes on the US flag. (false – 13) ■■ When they have finished, they swap cards.
b

8 Quiz round
Pu

■■ Prepare a set of quiz questions on a certain topic. You could

put the learners in teams or get them to answer the questions t t t
individually.
ion

■■ Ask the first question. For example: Revising previously-learnt material can be tedious, but I have
How much is a dime? a) 1 cent, b) 5 cents, c) 10 cents, suggested several ways in which it can be made fun, engaging
d) 50 cents and energising for the learners and the teacher. These activities
1,600 Pennsylvania Avenue is the address of which famous provide enjoyable alternatives to traditional revision where the
vil

building? a) the White House, b) the Statue of Liberty, teacher stands in front of the classroom, asks questions and
c) the Empire State Building, d) the One World Trade Center calls on individual learners to give the answers. In addition, all
Pa

■■ The person/team who gives the correct answer first wins the activities are easy to adapt and can be used right away in
a point. your next lesson. n
■■ Alternatively, get small groups to create their own quiz
©

questions for other groups to answer. During the preparation Thanks to Anna Trebits for her support.
stage, they can use their coursebooks to help them come up
with the questions.
9 Four corners Martin Bastkowski is an English teacher,
■■ Ask five or six learners to go into one of the four corners of university lecturer in TEFL and teacher
training, and materials writer. He has an MA
the classroom. in Education and has taught in Germany, the
■■ Ask a question on one of the topics previously discussed in USA and Ireland. He is particularly interested
class. The person who answers correctly first can move on to in communicative techniques and activities,
as well as efficient teaching methods.
the next corner of the room.
martin@bastkowski.de
■■ Carry out several rounds. The first person to get back to the
original corner is the winner.

www.etprofessional.com Issue 120 • January 2019 43

TEACHER DEVELOPMENT
Six minutes
and 40 seconds
William Littlewood employs quick-fire presentations as a strategy for training.
A
‘pecha kucha’ is a presentation based on
20 PowerPoint slides, each set to show
for 20 seconds, ie the whole presentation
lasts for exactly six minutes and 40
seconds. Once the slides begin to
progress, the speaker has no control over them and
has to ensure that his or her oral delivery is
synchronised with the slides that accompany it. The
ga
idea was first developed in Japan in 2003 as a way to
keep presentations concise and flowing. Since then,
‘pecha kucha nights’ have spread in popularity, and
hin
many useful introductions to pecha kucha can now
be found on the internet.
As part of the programme of the KOTESOL
International Conference in Korea in 2013,
lis
participants were offered the opportunity to give a
pecha kucha presentation. Up till then, pecha kucha
b
had been a concept that was unknown to me, but I
decided to ‘rush in where angels fear to tread’ and
Pu
claim a slot. It turned out to be challenging, but I
learnt a lot from my mistakes. The result is still
available on the KOTESOL website – together with
ion
more successful efforts by others.
What I learnt
vil
The main lesson I drew for myself was that
although I had spent enough (perhaps too much)
time on the preparation stages and on learning
Pa
various visual ‘tricks’ that were new to me at the
time, I had not spent enough time practising the
presentation itself and ensuring that my delivery
would be fluent, relaxed and coordinated with the
©
PowerPoint slides. The various introductions to
pecha kucha available online emphasise the
importance of practice, but nothing can compete
with experience for driving that lesson home!
Only time will tell whether any of my future
pecha kucha performances will benefit from the
lessons I learnt. However, in the shorter term, it is
my trainee teachers who are now reaping the
rewards. My experience as a presenter prompted me
to explore the potential of pecha kucha as a format
for trainee presentations in a teacher development
course. The trainees in question are advanced
44 Issue 120 • January 2019
ia
ed
learners of English (L1: Chinese) following an MA
programme in Language Studies. One course in the
M
programme deals with the language curriculum, and
for the last five years, I have asked groups of four or
five trainees to take on responsibility for designing
nd
and presenting a pecha kucha on how to teach
either one of the four ‘language skills’ (speaking,
listening, writing, reading) or one of the three
‘language systems’ (grammar, vocabulary,
pronunciation) during the final three sessions of the
course. The actual speaking time should be shared
equally within each group – generally, each trainee
simply takes responsibility for four or five slides, but
they are at liberty to choose a more complex
distribution. To help them prepare, they are given
guidelines, shown examples, and recommended to
read material such as relevant chapters in books by
Anne Burns and Jack Richards, Jeremy Harmer,
Cora Lindsay and Paul Knight, and David Nunan.
Otherwise, they have complete autonomy to work as
they wish within the constraints of the pecha kucha
framework.
Why use pecha kucha?
My first purpose in using pecha kucha has been to
widen the trainees’ awareness of key aspects of
language teaching: many of them have no prior
experience of teaching. In this situation, pecha
kucha is a good framework for ensuring that they
have a general overview of practical issues, which
they can follow up as intensively as they wish, either
immediately or in their future careers. Of course,
what they learn from seven presentations of six
minutes and 40 seconds each cannot be more than
the tip of the iceberg. But they need to go into some
depth to prepare their own pecha kucha, and are
encouraged (with varying degrees of success) to
read the background material for the others. We
also follow up each topic with practice-oriented
material provided by me.
A second purpose has been to provide a context
for the trainees, as L2 learners themselves, to practise
key processes in the development of oral fluency. I
have observed that one major hindrance to
www.etprofessional.com
 TEACHER DEVELOPMENT

developing fluency through making presentations is a A With regard to the pecha kucha which you co-presented:
strategy that seems ingrained in many of them from
Mean Mode Range
their past experience: first, they make photocopies of
1 On the whole, did you enjoy the 4.14 4 2–5
key texts; then, they highlight what they see as
experience?
relevant excerpts; finally, their presentation is based
2 How effective was it in encouraging 3.64 4 2–5
on these same excerpts, which they either read aloud
cooperation within the group?
or deliver from memory. In this case, at no point do
3 How useful was pecha kucha in 3.93 4 3–5
they need to engage with the texts intensively at the
helping you develop your language
level of meaning, integrate that meaning with their
and oral presentation skills?
own ideas and perceptions, or use the resulting
synthesis as a basis for oral production. I hope that at 4 How useful was it in helping you 4.00 4 3–5
least some aspects of this process may be facilitated become familiar with language

ia
by the need to select key content and produce a teaching principles and techniques?
synthesis in collaboration with others in the context

ed
B With regard to the pecha kuchas that other groups
of a pecha kucha.
co-presented:
The previous sentence hints at my third Mean Mode Range

M
purpose: I hoped that pecha kucha would provide
5 On the whole, did you enjoy the 4.07 4 2–5
a strong context for collaborative learning. In
experience?
terms of collaborative learning, pecha kucha is a
6 How useful was it in helping you 3.61 4 3–4

nd
form of ‘group investigation’ (as described, for
become familiar with language
example, by Steven McCafferty and his colleagues),
teaching principles and techniques?
in which the students agree on a topic within their

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7 On the whole, how easy was it to 3.14 3 2–4
group, take responsibility for sub-topics as
follow the content?
individuals, research these sub-topics, come
together outside class to share and synthesise the
C As an overall evaluation:
hin
information, and produce a joint end-product (in
Mean Mode Range
this case, the pecha kucha). If implemented
8 Would you advise me (or another 3.96 4 2–5
successfully, such forms of collaboration can help
teacher) to adopt this technique in
to make the classroom into what Chris Watkins
lis

other teacher education classes?

terms a ‘learning community’, in which the
students support each other and learn together. (Mode = response chosen most frequently)
b

The trainees’ evaluation of the

Pu

experience
In the context of the course, each pecha kucha was
ion

not assessed formally and did not contribute to the

trainees’ grades. At the beginning, I asked each class
if they wanted it to count towards their grades and
most responded ‘No’. This agreed with my own
vil

feeling that the experience was more likely to be

valuable and enjoyable if it was not motivated by
concerns about assessment.
Pa

After four years of encouraging informal

feedback from my trainees, I decided to carry out a
‘reality check’, in the form of a short questionnaire
©

with closed and open-ended items. The responses to

the closed items from the 28 trainees in the class are
shown in the box at the top of this page. The scale is
from 1 (= ‘not at all’) to 5 (= ‘very much’).
One pleasing result, which confirmed my
informal feedback from previous years, was that
most of the trainees found the pecha kucha format
enjoyable. With respect to their involvement as
presenters (item 1), the mean response for
enjoyment was 4.14. In listening to other groups’
pecha kuchas (item 5), their mean level of
enjoyment was 4.07 – somewhat lower, but still high,
in view of the challenge involved in following a
dense oral presentation on a complex topic. They
also considered the pecha kucha format effective for
developing knowledge of language teaching
principles (items 4 and 6, with means of 4.00 and
3.61). Of course, there was no independent measure
of how much they had in fact learnt, but still this
result suggests that the pecha kuchas had a positive
effect on the trainees’ self-confidence, and might
stimulate them to develop their knowledge further.
As a strategy for developing oral presentation skills

www.etprofessional.com Issue 120 • January 2019 45

TEACHER DEVELOPMENT
(item 3), the trainees rated pecha kucha with a mean
of 3.93. Slightly disappointing was their rating of
3.64 for the effectiveness of the format in stimulating
group cooperation (item 2). But still, the mode was
4, indicating that most trainees rated it positively.
ga
The lowest score (3.14) was about the ease of
following other groups’ presentations (item 7). This
aspect obviously requires attention in the future. The
hin
trainees’ free responses suggest some ways to do so.
How to improve the
lis
experience?
The trainees’ overall evaluation of the pecha kucha
b
experience was positive. With a mean rating of 3.96
Pu
and a mode of 4, they recommended retaining it as
part of the course (item 8). However, their responses
to item 7 show that many of them had difficulty in
processing so much content within a time frame of
ion
20 x 20 seconds.
Their open-ended comments confirmed this. Out
of 27 comments, no fewer than 11 made some
vil
reference to the related issues of time and
comprehensibility. For example:
‘Twenty seconds is too stressful. I like the idea of
Pa
pecha kucha but it can be longer.’
‘The time for each slide can be more.’
The trainees made some recommendations for
©
rectifying this. One recommended expanding the time
for each slide to 25 seconds, another to 30 seconds.
Another trainee recommended varying the number of
slides according to topic (though this would endanger
one of the main purposes of pecha kucha: to ensure
that each presentation is concise). Another suggestion
was to upload the PowerPoints and make them
accessible before class or let the presenters go through
them a second time, so that the listeners could recall
the content and ask questions.
A major unknown is what happened during the
preparation stages. Some of the part-time trainees,
46 Issue 120 • January 2019
who had full-time jobs, would have found it more
difficult than the others to arrange meetings to
collaborate with their group outside class. It may
well be that in this case, they simply agreed on
sub-topics and left each other to work individually.
This may be one reason for the lower-than-expected
(though still respectable) score of 3.64 for
cooperation within the group.
t t t
ia
All teaching is also a form of research. We plan it
with certain aims in mind, discover the results either
ed
impressionistically (as I did initially with pecha
kucha) or more formally (as reported here), adjust
M
our plans the next time round, and so on, in a cycle
of action and reflection. I am grateful to the
organisers of the KOTESOL International
nd
Conference in 2013 for giving me the idea and
opportunity to set this cycle in motion. Most of all,
I am grateful to the trainees following the MA
Programme in Language Studies at Hong Kong
Baptist University for participating with such spirit,
intelligence and good will. n
Some online sources of advice and examples of
pecha kucha presentations
Avoision Guide to making a pecha kucha: http://
avoision.com/pechakucha
KOTESOL Video library: http://koreatesol.org/video
Mitchell, O Five presentation tips for a pecha kucha or
ignite presentation: www.speakingaboutpresenting.com/
presentation-skills/pecha-kucha-presentation/
Burns, A and Richards, J C The Cambridge Guide to
Pedagogy and Practice in Second Language Teaching
CUP 2012
Harmer, J The Practice of English Language Teaching
(5th edn) Pearson 2014
Lindsay, C and Knight, P Learning and Teaching English
OUP 2006
McCafferty, S G, Jacobs, G M and DaSilva Iddings, A C
Cooperative Learning and Second Language Teaching
CUP 2006
Nunan, D (Ed) Practical English Language Teaching
McGraw-Hill/Contemporary 2003
Watkins, C Classrooms as Learning Communities
Routledge 2005
William Littlewood is Honorary
Professor at Hong Kong Baptist
University, where he teaches on
MA courses. He has published
widely in the field of language
teaching, and his publications
have been used in teacher
education across the world.
wlittlewood9@gmail.com
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develop new ideas with
NILE’s expert trainers

ia
Short courses, CELTA, Delta and MA

ed
for language teachers and trainers in

M
the UK, overseas and online

nd
Contact registrar@nile-elt.com for more information.
ga
hin
www.nile-elt.com
b lis
Pu
ion
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C
Pa

CM
©

MY

CY

CMY

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TEACHER DEVELOPMENT
No one told me ga
that! 4
hin
lis
F
or most of us, part of our job description
b
as teachers involves being observed from
time to time. These observations are
Pu
usually either done by another teacher as
a ‘peer observation’, perhaps with the aim
of sharing good practice, or by a line manager or
ion
boss, as part of an appraisal system or quality
assurance regime. Some of us might actually be the
ones observing, perhaps as part of our role as a
senior teacher or ADoS, because we want to focus
vil
on certain aspects of teaching for developmental
purposes, or because we are involved in training
Pa
other teachers. Jim Scrivener suggests that there
are five main types of observation:
1 Peer observation: the aim is usually for both
parties to share ideas and learn something new. It is
©
usually done informally (or could be formal, if a
school insists that teachers observe each other), with
teachers exchanging different ways of doing things,
learning new techniques from their colleagues and
perhaps even re-remembering old ways.
2 Assessment: this type of observation tends to be
carried out by a ‘superior’ who is tasked with
assessing teaching against criteria of quality,
acceptability or appropriacy. The observation
could form part of a teacher’s end-of-year review,
or simply be done to ensure they are doing what is
expected of them.
48 Issue 120 • January 2019
ia
ed
M
nd
In the fourth instalment of this series
aimed at novice teacher trainers,
Beth Davies and Nicholas Northall
discuss lesson observation.
3 Data collection: this could form part of research
into some aspect of classroom life (eg the type and
frequency of use of error-correction techniques).
These observations are often conducted by peers or,
in some cases, academics.
4 Developmental: during these observations, the
observee specifies what they want the observer to
focus on. For example, a teacher might want to
know whether their instructions are clear. The
purpose of these observations is for the observed
teacher to gain feedback on specific areas of their
teaching in order to develop in those areas.
5 Training: as the name suggests, these are
observations carried out by teacher trainers as part
of a training programme. The teacher is observed
and assessed according to a set of specified criteria.
Trainers use these criteria to identify the teacher’s
current level of skill and their needs as they progress.
Problems with observation
! Before we go any further, we’d like you to
consider how you feel about being observed.
What three adjectives would you use to describe
your feelings? We’d be willing to bet that the
thought conjured up largely negative emotions!
Whatever the stated purpose of an observation,
ie whichever type is being carried out, observations
www.etprofessional.com

often tend to be seen as evaluative rather than
developmental, and this can make the experience
uncomfortable for everyone involved. Having an
extra person in the classroom may lead to unnatural
behaviour from both the teacher and the students:
the teacher may change their behaviour according to
what they think the observer wants to see, and the
students may respond differently (often more
reticently) when there is an observer in the room.
There are also challenges for the observer: they
may not want to be there, but have to be as a result
of institutional demands (as in the case of a senior
teacher or ADoS, for example); they may not have
been trained in how to observe or, indeed, in how to
handle the pre- and post-observation discussion
sessions (as in the case of a line manager); and they
may also find it difficult to provide effective written
and/or verbal feedback (if this is required).
In this article, and in the remaining two
instalments of this series, we will explore ways
in which some of the tensions outlined above
can be addressed.
Observation versus evaluation
Rosie Tanner and Catherine Green draw a distinction
between observation and evaluation. According to
them, the differences can be categorised as shown
in the table at the top of this page.
In short, observation is seen as developmental,
whereas evaluation is viewed as judgemental, ie
b
some sort of assessment is being made.
Pu
Context
As this series is aimed at supporting novice teacher
trainers, we want to focus here primarily on the
ion
fifth type of observation, ie training. As trainers
observing on pre-service courses such as CELTA
or Trinity CertTESOL, our role essentially entails
vil
observing to assess trainee teachers, thus it can be
classed as evaluative, according to the definitions
above. Given the integral part that observation
Pa
plays in the assessment of such courses, the whole
process is often perceived as threatening by
trainees and, in our experience, as the most
sensitive part of the job by many trainers.
©
However, we would argue that our observations
should also aim to be developmental, rather than
just a box-ticking exercise.
Some points to consider
! Before we go any further, consider whether
you agree or disagree with these points:
1 When observing a lesson, you should make
a note of everything the trainee does.
2 Use a running commentary to describe what is
happening in the lesson.
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TEACHER DEVELOPMENT
Observation Evaluation
■■ describes an action or behaviour. ■■ judges an action or behaviour.
■■ focuses on one or many different ■■ may be broad or narrow in focus.
acts or ways of behaving.
■■  ay be done by a teacher trainee,
m ■■ is usually done by a teacher’s
a fellow teacher, a parent or a superior.
school inspector.
■■ is done to learn something about ■■ is done to find out how good the
the classroom experience. teacher is or how well the learners
are progressing.
ia
3 It’s a good idea to write a summary of the
ed
lesson, highlighting the strengths as well as
areas to work on.
4 At the end of the lesson, make a note of every
M
aspect the trainee needs to improve.
5 Always hand-write observation notes.
nd
6 Don’t be afraid to interfere in the lesson
(especially if the trainee is struggling with
something).
ga
7 Whilst observing, make expressions (such as
pulling faces) or gasp whenever the trainee
does something wrong.
hin
8 Always sit at the back of the classroom when
you are observing.
9 Focus only on the trainee and not on the
lis
learners.
10 If you are working with several trainees,
encourage those trainees who are not teaching
to observe their peers.
Some suggestions
Producing written feedback (points 1–5)
We believe it can be useful for a trainee to go away
with a record of the lesson as you observed it –
including actual timings of stages, relevant
observations about what the students and the
trainee were doing at each stage and comments on
how the actual stages corresponded to the lesson
plan. The key word here is relevant: it’s not practical,
nor conducive to development, to attempt to focus
on everything that takes place during the lesson,
and what you choose to focus on is likely to be
determined by the trainee’s needs (ie their personal
aims), action points arising from previous lessons
or, crucially, the stage of the course.
Whether or not a running commentary is used is
likely to be a personal decision, a centre or training
team preference, or determined by the specific
feedback form used. As with anything, there are pros
and cons. For example, it does take more time but, on
the other hand, it can help to situate comments in
context. Recently, a number of trainers have started
using online chat apps, such as WhatsApp, Slack or
Issue 120 • January 2019 49
TEACHER DEVELOPMENT
Flock as a medium for peer- and trainer-led
discussion of a trainee’s lesson – and, quite often,
these chat streams are being used as a replacement
for a running commentary. However, a discussion of
this is beyond the scope of this article and, possibly,
more relevant to more experienced trainers.
An overall summary of the lesson, including
both strengths and areas for development, is
essential and provides trainees with a useful
reference post-lesson. We would advise against
listing every area the candidate needs to work on, as
this can be demotivating and impossible to achieve.
Instead, limit the number of action points to
between three and five and, again, ensure these are
realistic and relate to the stage of the course.
Whether to produce handwritten or typed
observation notes is likely to come down to either
personal preference or the resources that are available
in your context. Nowadays, most people tend to type
– and this does allow more written feedback to be
produced in the time available. On the other hand,
handwritten feedback may be perceived as more
ga
personal and may encourage you to focus only on
certain areas. If you do choose (or are forced) to write
by hand, do ensure your writing is legible!  
hin
Managing the observation process:
practicalities (points 6–9)
Roger Gower, Diane Phillips and Steve Walters
lis
suggest that while the role of the observer during an
observed lesson is to support the trainee, this should
b
be silent, confident support. We agree, arguing that
Pu
having trainers or, indeed, other trainees talking
during a lesson can be incredibly distracting for a
trainee teacher. They also believe that the trainer
should not in any way interrupt the trainees during
ion
the lesson. If the trainee is having a problem with
their lesson, an interruption or – in extreme cases
– taking over the lesson could have disastrous
consequences for the trainee’s confidence, causing
vil
far more damage than the original mistake. Gower
et al go so far as to state that a trainer grimacing or
Pa
tutting at a trainee’s mistakes would also have a
similar effect. It would be far better, as a trainer, to
think about what could be done to help prevent the
situation happening again and, after the lesson, help
©
the trainee to understand this.
However, we do feel that it can be a good idea
for the trainer to move around the classroom
occasionally during a lesson (perhaps during a
reading task or during a grammar exercise) to get a
better idea of the learning taking place, especially
if the trainer is sitting at the back and cannot see
what the learners are doing. If you decide to take
this approach, we would suggest that you don’t
interfere in the lesson (eg by offering advice to the
learners or answering questions), as this could
undermine the trainee.
50 Issue 120 • January 2019
Although, in this context, the observation is
primarily evaluative, do remember to consider the
learners. Perhaps you could try sitting at the front of
the classroom sometimes, to allow you to focus better
on the learners and their learning, rather than focusing
only on the teacher and their teaching. Learners could
be acknowledged more by, for example, getting
feedback from them or framing your written and/or
spoken feedback in terms of the learners, ie by looking
at the lesson through their eyes.
A final word of warning in relation to the
ia
learners: Gower et al make the point that the trainer
should not be overly friendly with the learners – such
ed
as chatting to them, taking the register, reminding
them of the next lesson, etc – as this could lead to the
learners thinking that the trainer is the ‘real’ teacher,
M
with the result that they stop paying attention to the
trainee. Worth bearing in mind!
Peer observation (point 10)
nd
We feel it is beneficial for trainees to observe each
other; indeed, this is a requirement on some
pre-service courses. Peer observation allows learner
teachers to pick up ideas, observe different
techniques and learn from each other, and can often
form the basis of post-lesson discussion. In
addition, they are not observing someone (such as
an experienced teacher) who, at the moment, is far
beyond what they hope to achieve as a teacher, thus
making the benefits more meaningful and tangible
at such an early stage in their professional journey.
This, of course, is the first type of observation
according to Scrivener’s definitions and is ‘true
observation’, according to Tanner and Green.
Scott Thornbury and Peter Watkins suggest that
when trainees observe each other, it is a good idea
to give them a task to complete, and they provide
several ideas for such tasks. If the trainees don’t
have a task to do, their observation may lack focus.
Observation tasks for trainees should, wherever
possible, be tied to the stage of the training course
they are at; that is, they could be connected to
assignments, they could complement input sessions
(see our article in ETp 118) or they could be related
to discussion points arising from previous lessons.
Observation tasks also help trainees to focus their
ideas and reflection for post-lesson feedback.
If trainees are observing each other, like trainers,
they should not be talking or making noise while
their peers are teaching. They should also arrive on
time, not cause any excessive disturbance to the
lesson and should remain focused and in the
classroom throughout the lesson.
Benefits of observation
Despite the anxiety often associated with it, there is
no doubt that observation, even when forming part
of the assessment process on a teacher training
www.etprofessional.com
 TEACHER DEVELOPMENT

course, can be an invaluable developmental tool, if
it is handled in the right way.
When we’re teaching, it can be really difficult to
take in objectively what is happening around us, and
it can be all too easy for teachers (inexperienced or
otherwise) to fail to notice key strengths and
weaknesses in their own practice. Another pair of
eyes can often provide insight and give a different
perspective; as long as there is a degree of trust, an
observer can notice things that the teacher may fail
to because of their emotional involvement or simply
■■ Make sure you get the final lesson plan and copies
of the materials to be used from the trainee before
they start teaching (see our article in ETp 119).
You need to have these in front of you as you
observe the lesson.
■■ Create a positive and comfortable learning
environment to reduce anxiety levels.
■■ Focus on development as well as evaluation, even
when the observation forms part of an accredited
teacher training course.
Don’t try to do too much or focus on too many

ia
■■
being ‘in the moment’.
things at once. Tailor the observation to your
The process of being observed enables trainees
context.

to reflect on their practice, share ideas (with the
trainer and their peers) and can lead to real
■■
professional growth. In addition, the observer can
ed
Remember the importance of the learners and the
learning process (it’s not all about the teachers!).

M
(and should!) also learn from the experience, a fact ■■ Relax and enjoy it, and do your best to help
which is often overlooked. Jill Cosh goes so far as everyone to benefit from the experience.
to say that the observer should have as their focus

nd
what they can learn about their own teaching from
t t t
the observation. Indeed, we have both certainly
picked up tips and ideas from our observations

over the years that we have happily incorporated
into our own teaching!
So, while the anxiety involved in learning that an
observation is due is completely understandable (and
something which a lot of very experienced teachers
– and trainers! – still feel), we believe that the process
ga
We hope you will now feel more confident about
approaching lesson observation and that our
suggestions will help you, your trainees and their
hin
learners to get the most out of the process. In our
next article, we will discuss what comes after
observations, namely feedback. n
lis

can be made as comfortable and effective as possible,

so that both parties get the most out of it. Cosh, J ‘Peer observation: a reflective model’ ELT
Journal 53 (1) 1999
b

Gower, R, Phillips, D and Walters, S Teaching Practice:

Practical points to consider A Handbook for Teachers in Training Macmillan 2005
Pu

Scrivener, J Learning Teaching: The Essential Guide to

When observing trainee teachers, you might want to
English Language Teaching Macmillan 2015
consider the following points:
Tanner, R and Green, C Tasks for Teacher Education
Will you provide a running commentary, Pearson 1998
ion

■■
summary or both? Thornbury, S and Watkins, P The CELTA Course Trainee
Book CUP 2007
■■ What will you focus on? Will it be determined by
the trainee’s needs/action points, stage of the
vil

course, etc? Beth Davies is a teacher and

teacher trainer, based at the
■■ Will you type or hand-write? English Language Teaching
Centre at the University of
Pa

■■ Where will you sit?

Sheffield, UK. She has worked
■■ What will you do if the trainee teaches something in ELT since 2001 in a variety of
incorrectly or gets overcome with nerves? contexts and has an MA in
Applied Linguistics with TESOL.
©

■■ What peer-observation tasks will you provide?

e.davies@sheffield.ac.uk
■■ Are you going to experiment with an online chat
app (maybe once you have gained more experience)?
Nicholas Northall works at the
Top tips English Language Teaching
Centre at the University of
Here are our top tips for inexperienced observers: Sheffield, UK, where he teaches
EAP and contributes to the
■■ Seek out some training or awareness-raising centre’s teacher training
activities prior to live observations. For example, programme. He has worked in
you could practise with video or audio recordings ELT for almost 20 years.
of lessons, shadow a fellow trainer observing or n.northall@sheffield.ac.uk
perhaps enrol on a train-the-trainer course.

www.etprofessional.com Issue 120 • January 2019 51

TECHNOLOGY
ga
hin
b lis
Anastasiya Shalamay suggests how you can get started with all kinds of classes.
Pu
W
hether you work with adults or
ion
young learners, testing what your
students know has always been an
inevitable part of any classroom
experience – and if we ask the
vil
students, they are likely to say it is their least
favourite part. Think of your teenage class, who
somehow always manage to be off sick on
Pa
assessment day!
Not only do tests usually take place in
uncomfortable silence, but they also steal quite a lot
©
of valuable classroom time, with its opportunities
for exposure to the English language – something
that our students already lack, if they are not
studying in an English-speaking environment. On
top of that, you also have to mark all those test
papers by hand, which you are unlikely to have
enough time to do properly if you already teach for
40 hours a week. Does it have to be this way?
A solution that blended learning would suggest is
that you assess your students outside the classroom,
ie online. Here is an overview of three popular free
tools (SurveyMonkey, GoogleForms and Kahoot!),
52 Issue 120 • January 2019
ia
ed
M
nd
Online
testing
together with ideas for how and when you could use
them for online testing with your classes.
Needs analysis and diagnostic
testing
Let’s imagine a typical first day of a course with new
corporate clients. A reasonable first step might be to
dedicate the first lesson to a needs analysis and
diagnostic test, which would help you learn not only
what the students’ expectations are, but also how
good their language is.
However, as business English courses are often
limited in time, many teachers are tempted to teach the
students straight away, rather than using the first
lesson to learn about the class. You can’t really blame
them – time is money, especially in business English!
As a result, teachers often choose either to trust what
the HR managers say about the needs and level of the
new students (which is not always reliable), or give the
necessary questionnaires and tests as homework.
If you have ever chosen the second option, you
will already know that students quite often forget to
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submit the materials you expect. Also, the bigger
your class is, the better the organisational skills you
need, to mark all the tests on time, analyse the
results and pick out the common strengths,
weaknesses and needs. There are, however, some
ways to make this process easier.
One possible solution would be to use online
technology. Apart from the obvious benefit of the
needs analysis survey and test being easily accessible
from your computer (or your students’) at any time, it
also gives you a chance to become more
approachable. Having reviewed what your students
have written, you can send them a short encouraging
comment about how you think the course will meet
their needs. You can also ask one or two questions.
My students always appreciate extra interest in their
goals, and I am sure yours will too!
The message can be sent as an email or right
from the test webpage, as part of giving feedback
on the test results.
Tools and more test types
If you would like to try running an online test,
your next question is likely to be about the tools
you should use. It might not be that obvious, but
any online survey tool can easily be turned into a
short quiz or a full-blown language test. I would
personally recommend either SurveyMonkey or
GoogleForms. Both are intuitively clear tools that
include a range of question types (open-ended,
multiple-choice, dropdown, scales, grids, etc).
Another great advantage is that they both offer a
Pu
‘quiz mode’, which means you can allocate points
to each question, depending on your preferences –
the algorithm will do all the counting for you. It is
ion
also possible to let the students see the results as
soon as they have finished the test, unless the test
includes open-ended answers. You can also choose
to release the score after manual review – this will
vil
give you time to add a personalised comment, eg
Well done, Anna! Excellent use of past tenses!
before forwarding the results to the student.
Pa
Typing up a progress test from a coursebook won’t
take much time. You can neatly adapt it in any way
you need (as opposed to hastily writing extra questions
©
on a photocopy), and then use this test over and over
with different classes until you get bored with it.
Another great advantage is that you can add quite
detailed explanations of why this or that answer is
correct, and you can refer the students to a rule or a
coursebook page where they can find more
information (see Figure 1). I have found this to be
much more efficient and less embarrassing than going
through the answers in open class, not to mention that
it helps build up the learners’ independence.
Such online tests also give you a detailed
summary of the students’ answers, which is very
www.etprofessional.com
TECHNOLOGY
ia
ed
M
Figure 1 A test question on GoogleForms
nd
handy for diagnostic purposes: you will be able to
see at a glance which questions turned out to be
ga
the easiest and the trickiest, so that you can revise
the syllabus depending on your students’ needs.
Besides that, identifying those students with the
hin
same strengths and weaknesses or the same scores
will really help academic managers who are
responsible for placement testing – automatic
marking and grade statistics have saved hours of
lis
my time so far!
From the students’ perspective, online testing
b
provides more time to process questions and
encourages ‘research’ (this could be described as
‘cheating’, but most of the time I actually
appreciate the time and effort that students spend
in trying to find the correct answers, and think it
is educational in itself). Thanks to features such
as ‘logical branching’ (changing what question or
section of the test a student sees next, depending
on their answers) and/or ‘integrated feedback’
(pre-planned comments on correct and incorrect
answers), you can even prompt the students to
think about a particular rule if they choose a
wrong answer, or guide them to a page with easier
questions – in a way, quite similar to ‘adaptive
testing’ (tests that adapt to the taker’s level,
depending on their answers), but without a
question bank (a collection of questions, usually
representing a wide span of levels of challenge,
from which a computer chooses the next question,
depending on the test taker’s previous reply). Do
you need to ensure equal conditions for all the
test takers? Set a time limit by only making the
form available at a particular time and disabling it
when necessary.
Of course, some students will simply forget to
take the test – and there isn’t much you can do
about that. What helps me with my teenage classes,
Issue 120 • January 2019 53
TECHNOLOGY
though, is adding a link to something they find
really interesting (an article about a celebrity, a
video, etc) to the pop-up window they see after they
have submitted the test. You could give your
students hints about what they will find at the end
(eg Next time, tell me what the video was about: a
computer game, a popular singer or a new Marvel
film) or you could just say it’s a surprise – no matter
what you choose, it’s a fun way to exploit young
learners’ curiosity. Also, when word gets around the
class that there is something interesting that they
can only access once they have taken the test, it
encourages more of them to do so. What you have
added can then be discussed during the next lesson.
Making tests fun
So how about young learners – don’t they hate
tests? Well, some do, and it is often a challenge to
get them to write something independently outside
the classroom. The bigger problem is that the
learners will certainly need someone’s help when
doing an online test, at least the first time, so this
ga
doesn’t make individual online testing easy in a
young learner class. If you would still like to try,
I’d recommend starting with groups who already
hin
play complicated computer games confidently, and
those are usually learners aged nine to ten.
However, you can, instead, add some more fun
lis
to your face-to-face young learner classes by using
online tools. Most of my young learners really
enjoy playing Kahoot! (see Figure 2) – it is
b
certainly worth trying it out if you haven’t yet. It
Pu
is not traditional online testing because it involves
teamwork (which makes it more of a form of
entertainment) and will happen in class (because
you will be hosting the quiz), but it still can be
ion
used in a creative and fun way for informal
formative assessment. If you cooperate with other
young learner teachers at your school, you can
vil
design a series of online quizzes together that will
be available for everyone.
Kahoot! works best with a smartboard or a
Pa
projector. Here’s how to use a Kahoot! quiz as a test,
with your students working in teams:
©
Figure 2 A Kahoot! quiz
54 Issue 120 • January 2019
1 Design a quiz on kahoot.com before the lesson,
using language items that you want to test.
2 During the lesson, ask the learners to open
kahoot.com (or the Kahoot! mobile app) on
their team’s device (eg a computer or an iPad:
one per team).
3 On a smartboard, open the quiz from your
Kahoot! account and choose ‘Play’.
4 A code will appear on the smartboard,
which the learners have to enter on their
ia
devices to join.
5 Ask the learners to come up with team names
ed
and type them on their devices. Then they
write their real names, or come up with
superhero names if they want.
M
6 When everyone is set, you hit the ‘Start’
button and the quiz begins.
nd
7 The learners read the questions and look at
the possible answers on the smartboard, but
answer on their team’s device, usually by
choosing one of the four colours that
correspond to the answer options.
8 After the quiz has finished, the results will
appear on the smartboard.
t t t
These three tools may seem intimidating at first,
but I am sure that after having explored them in
more detail, you will find that they are quite
straightforward. I also believe that the benefits of
online testing will outweigh any inconveniences
you might encounter while designing your first
test. Your first test will take more time to set up,
of course, but things will become easier as you
become more familiar with the technology.
Finally, online testing is not only an essential
part of blended learning, but it can also open for
you the possibility of actually teaching online – so
why not give it a try? n
Anastasiya Shalamay is a
teacher of English and German,
a Pearson speaking examiner
and a freelance teacher trainer
for Cambridge English. She is
currently working in Kyiv,
Ukraine. She is interested in all
aspects of teaching, academic
management and training, but
her personal favourites are
teaching young learners, ESP
and teaching online.
shalamay.anastasiya@gmail.com
www.etprofessional.com
 TECHNOLOGY

Unlocking the
potential of SAMR
Flora Floris and Willy Renandya present some ideas on using the SAMR model

ia
for transforming speaking and writing tasks.

ed
P
erhaps the most common reason for Nancy Rhodes are all of the opinion that

M
learning a language is to be able to technological resources may help teachers provide
communicate with others in that a positive environment that will decrease anxiety
language – or, in other words, to speak levels and be perceived as less threatening to the

nd
and write in the target language. Yet learners. Choosing the right digital tools and the
these two skills often present the biggest hurdles appropriate teaching strategies can have a
for L2 learners. Magdalena Aleksandrzak points profound effect on shaping the students’ language

ga
out that ‘achieving proficiency in foreign language skills in myriad ways and can make classroom
speaking in classroom conditions is not an easy tasks fun and inspiring.
task’; and, according to Marion Tillema, writing is
hin
also ‘one of the most complex skills to be mastered’.
Learning to speak and write in English, therefore,
may cause feelings of fear and frustration, and The SAMR model describes the path
bring about a decrease in motivation. by which technology can be
lis

One of the many possible ways to address this

problem could be by incorporating digital tools systematically embedded in
b

into the language classroom. Melanie Dunn teachers’ instructional practices

reports that David Crookall and Rebecca Oxford,
Pu

Andrew Ravenscroft, and Ingrid Pufahl and

The activities presented in this article are

ion

Redefinition based on the principle of the SAMR

(Substitution, Augmentation, Modification and
Transformation

Tech allows for the creation of new

Redefinition) model, as proposed by Ruben
tasks, previously inconceivable
Puentedura. The SAMR model itself is often used
vil

to help teachers infuse technology into their

Modification teaching, as the model describes the path by
which technology can be systematically embedded
Pa

Tech allows for significant in teachers’ instructional practices.

task redesign
We are going to focus primarily on the
Transformation stage, covering the Modification and
©

Redefinition levels. We assume that the target

Augmentation students are already familiar with some of the tools
Enhancement

Tech acts as a direct tool substitute, that are frequently used in the Enhancement stage,
with functional improvement such as spelling and grammar checkers, online
dictionaries and thesauri, or Microsoft Office; and
also that the target students are ready for tasks
Substitution which require more sophisticated use of technology.
Tech acts as a direct tool substitute, It is important to note that the Modification
with no functional change level is where task components are redesigned
with significant changes, and are used more
effectively to produce a richer outcome that will
Dr Ruben Puentedura’s SAMR model for technology integration transform the students’ learning. The Redefinition

www.etprofessional.com Issue 120 • January 2019 55

TECHNOLOGY
level is where technology allows the teacher to
replace old tasks with new tasks that were
previously not possible. Redefinition might
represent the most adventurous and exciting way
for students to demonstrate their learning
through the use of technology.
Suggested activities
Here are four examples of speaking and writing
tasks designed for the Transformation stage. These
activities are intended for different types of learners,
to showcase how technological innovations can be
integrated in any English language classroom.
Example 1
Original task: The teacher asks beginner-level
business English students to present a topic which
is related to their working experience.
Modification: Each student has to choose two
reading texts describing two of the following three
topics: 1) a piece of office equipment, 2) a daily
professional activity, 3) a job description. All the
ga
texts come from their coursebook or are provided
by the teacher. The students are asked to practise
reading the texts aloud several times, record
hin
themselves reading them, listen to their recordings,
and share the recordings with their teacher and
classmates. In doing these activities, the students
lis
are asked to use free text-to-speech tools such as
NaturalReader or Text2Speech, audio recorder
and Google Drive.
b
Redefinition: This time, each student is asked to
Pu
write a 50- to 100-word text to describe two of the
following: 1) a piece of office equipment which is
essential to the daily operations of their office,
ion
vil
Pa
©
56 Issue 120 • January 2019
2) their office’s annual or routine plan or activity,
3) a memorable office assignment. The completed
task is then shared using Google Docs so that other
students can provide feedback and comments. In
addition to the writing task, the students are also
asked to prepare a picture or illustration that will
support their descriptive text. When they are ready
with their descriptive text and picture, they are
asked to practise reading the text aloud, using free
text-to-speech tools. Next, they are asked to use
the Clarisketch application to create a short video
in which they will upload their picture and record
ia
their reading. The link to the video will then be
shared for public view via a class website.
ed
Example 2
M
Original task: The teacher asks a class of
university students to write a 1,000- to 3,000-
word essay on one of the following topics: 1)
Computer and mobile technology will (or will
nd
not) replace teachers, 2) Computer and mobile
technology hinders (or adds to) creativity and
imagination.
Modification: The students are asked to create a
brief report that includes video interviews with
some classroom teachers on one of the
aforementioned topics. The students work in groups
and use Google Docs to compose their report
collaboratively in real time. Then each group uses
Google Classroom to post their work, receive peer
feedback and improve their report.
Redefinition: Each group is asked to choose another
group’s report and to create an animated video
using PowToon or Animaker, based on the selected
report. The video aims to support the opinions of
the report writers. Each group that creates the
supporting video should consult with the students
who wrote the report, showing their script to these
students and to the teacher. The reviews or
discussions are conducted online through Google
Docs. The videos are then uploaded on the class
YouTube channel for viewer comments.
Example 3
Original task: The students are asked to present an
overview of a museum in their city/town and to
explain how the director keeps the museum running
smoothly. The students may supplement their oral
presentation with compiled cut-and-pasted magazine
or newspaper clippings.
Modification: The students work in groups and
choose a museum to observe. They take photos
and make video recordings at the location. They
also need to interview the museum director to find
out how the museum is run, including information
on the museum’s programmes, achievements,
strategic plans, etc. The students then use the
information they have gathered to make a class
www.etprofessional.com
 TECHNOLOGY

presentation. They are asked to combine text,

audio and video in their presentations and share
the files via Google Drive. The ‘Comment’ features
are used to give peer feedback.
Redefinition: Working in groups, the students use
Skype in the Classroom to meet live with two
museum directors from two different areas, in
order to find out how they manage the museums.
Each group then creates a digital documentary
video, focusing on how these two museums try
to keep going and what museums in their own

ia
country or area could learn from them. The
presentation is uploaded onto YouTube and

ed
allows viewers to comment.
Example 4

M
Original task: The teacher asks the students to
write a 1,000- to 2,000-word review of a movie.
They can choose their movie from a list provided

nd
by the teacher.
Modification: The students work in groups to
watch their chosen movie and prepare a 1,000- to

2,000-word review of it. The review is created by
using e-book tools such as Book Creator. The
students are also asked to supplement their written
text with movie clips and images that will support
their opinions. When the students click the
‘Publish’ key, they will get a unique link (URL) to
their e-book, which will enable people with the
ga
Aleksandrzak, M ‘Problems and challenges in teaching
and learning speaking at advanced level’
hin
Glottodidactica 37 2011
Dunn, M G ‘The effect of Voice Thread® integration on
high school students’ anxiety and oral proficiency in
the foreign language classroom’ Doctoral dissertation
lis

Liberty University (http://goo.gl/r3iFYY) 2012

shared link to access it. The students are then
required to share the link with their classmates and Puentedura, R ‘SAMR and TPCK: An introduction’
b

(www.hippasus.com/rrpweblog/archives/2013/03/28/
teacher, in order to get feedback. Book Creator SAMRandTPCK_AnIntroduction.pdf) 2013
Pu

enables online revision, so everybody can see any
changes that are made immediately.
Redefinition: When the students have finished
their revisions, they are asked to export and
ion
Tillema, M ‘Writing in first and second language:
empirical studies on text quality and writing processes’
LOT Dissertation Series 2012

upload their e-book as a YouTube video. They are Flora Debora Floris is a
also asked to embed their YouTube video in a lecturer at Petra Christian
Google Form and create a short quiz or a feedback University, Indonesia, where she
vil

form relating to it. The link can be shared via a teaches general and business
English and language teaching
classroom website or Google Classroom. This is a methodology courses. Some of
way to confirm that the uploaded video has been her published papers are
Pa

viewed, and to find out whether the audience is available for download at
satisfied or not with the review. http://petra.academia.edu/
FloraDebora.
©

t t t
Willy Ardian Renandya is an
experienced language teacher
We hope that the above examples can help spark educator, currently teaching at
some ideas. Our suggested activities can easily be the National Institute of
Education, Nanyang
adapted for use with other text genres and might be
Technological University,
incorporated into just about any lesson plan. Singapore. He maintains an
Hopefully, these activities will serve as a reminder active language teacher
that technological innovations, used in meaningful professional development forum
and creative ways, can really be integrated in any called Teacher Voices: www.
facebook.com/groups/
English language classroom, enabling us to teachervoices/.
transform the way that our students perceive and
debora@petra.ac.id
experience the learning process. n

www.etprofessional.com Issue 120 • January 2019 57

TECHNOLOGY
Five things you always wanted to know about
using technology to
promote reading skills
(but were too afraid to ask)
1 (politician, entrepreneur, scientist …) that they admire, and to
Why technology and the reading skill?
The internet provides us with a rich repository of texts in a wide
range of genres. Magazine and newspaper articles, graphic novels
(or comics), blog posts, interactive fiction, memes, social media
posts ... Many online text types can include multimedia, integrating
images, video or audio alongside the written word. It is now easy
for students to find and read texts in English, whatever their
proficiency in the language, either during class or in their free time.
There is also a wide range of devices we can use to access digital
text. Apart from computers and mobile devices, we have dedicated
e-readers like the Kindle, which, far from ringing the death knell of
hin
the printed book, can widen our reading access and choices. As
actor Stephen Fry quipped: ‘Books are no more threatened by
Kindle than stairs by elevators.’
2 words while reading can help students understand texts, and over
lis
What digital texts should my students read?
This depends on your students’ needs. Business English students
b
may need to read (and write) emails, while others may need or
want to understand (and produce) social media updates in
Pu
English. EAP students may need to read (and write) academic
articles online. In each of these cases, it’s not simply a matter of
reading and understanding the English words on the digital page,
ion
but also of being familiar with a range of additional conventions.
Any reading of digital text will require a certain amount of digital
literacy, from understanding the use of hashtags (#) in a social
media update, to understanding the use of images in memes and
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social media, to understanding hyperlinking and sourcing
conventions in online academic text. These additional
conventions may need to be taught explicitly.
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3 Isn’t reading text on a digital device difficult?
We need to ensure that the length of the text that we ask our
©
students to read is suited to the technology they have at home,
or the technology that you use in the classroom. Longer texts
like blog posts or online articles are better suited to reading on
computers and laptops because of the larger screen size.
Shorter texts like Twitter tweets, or Facebook or Instagram
posts, are suited to the smaller screens of smartphones.
Although short social media texts are not the sort of ‘traditional’
texts that we normally associate with reading in the English
language classroom, they can provide the students with useful
reading practice that is short and focused.
Here’s a simple reading activity based on social media updates:
Ask each student to choose a celebrity or famous person
58 Issue 120 • January 2019
In this series,
Nicky Hockly explains
aspects of technology which
some people may be
embarrassed to confess that
they don’t really understand.
In this article, she explores how
technology can be used to
support the development
of the students’
reading skills.
ia
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follow their chosen person’s social media updates on their mobile
devices outside class time, over a few weeks or months. In class,
M
ask them to provide regular updates on what their chosen
celebrity has been saying or doing on social media.
4  hat if my students don’t understand words in
W
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digital texts?
One advantage of digital text is that there are dictionary plug-ins or
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apps that work with computer browsers or on mobile devices. This
means that when your students read digital text in English and find
a word they don’t understand, they can move their mouse pointer
over (or, on a mobile device, touch with their finger) the unknown
word and see an immediate dictionary definition. Research has
shown that having immediate access to the definitions of key
time this increased comprehension can improve their reading skills.
5
 an technology help my students develop other
C
reading skills?
Yes, and you can easily foster this, for example by using a
word processing program to produce texts for your students
that focus on specific reading skills. For example, type out a
text (eg from your coursebook) into a word-processed
document, and then arrange the paragraphs in the wrong
order. Get the students to access the word-processed text,
and to drag the paragraphs into the right order. This will help
them with text organisation, coherence and cohesion. You can
also highlight key words, structures or ideas in a word-
processed document to encourage your students to notice
new language. The students can even create similar word-
processed texts for each other, as a review activity based on a
coursebook reading they have already seen. n
Nicky Hockly has been involved in EFL
teaching and teacher training since 1987. She
is Director of Pedagogy of The Consultants-E,
an online teacher training and development
consultancy, and she is the prize-winning
author of many books about language
teaching and technology. Her company The
Consultants-E (www.theconsultants-e.com)
offers online educational technology training
courses for English language teachers.
nicky.hockly@theconsultants-e.com
www.etprofessional.com
 TECHNOLOGY

Russell Stannard

Webwatcher gets creative

with Quizlet.

I
have been making use of Quizlet a lot recently. It is one of the
most popular tools for language learning, and it allows you to
create your own online flashcards and then use them with a
variety of game types or ‘modes’, including matching, gravity,
spelling and various test modes. (‘Gravity’ is a fun game where
asteroids fall down the screen towards earth, and you have to type
If they turn on the audio, they will also hear the sentence first
before they have to reproduce it, and this way they are hearing,
reading and then reproducing the language.
I have also been using Quizlet to focus on grammar. In the
examples below, the students first hear and see the sentence in
the present simple. They have to try to produce the same

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in the words for the objects pictured on them before they reach sentence, but in the past tense. They can then click on a button
the bottom.) More recently, a ‘diagram’ mode has been introduced, and check if they were right. Again, the focus is on production, as

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in which you have to label parts of a diagram correctly. well as reading and listening.

The flashcards

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I go swimming I went
Quizlet is popular because it is quite simple to use and you can in the swimming in
make flashcards really easily. In fact, I tend to search for sets of local pool. the local pool.

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flashcards which have already been created by other teachers.
I then save these to my own account and edit them to suit my
requirements. I can share a link to the flashcards with the students, I get up at six in I got up at six in

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and they can then access the cards and play games with them. the morning. the morning.
Quizlet is very flexible, enabling you to exploit a large range
of combinations involving putting one thing on the front side of
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the card and something different on the back. So, for example, Accessing the cards
you could have an English word on the front, and a definition in
Your students do not have to sign up to Quizlet in order to use it. If
English, or a picture, or a definition and a picture, or a translation,
you create a free account and produce some cards, you can share
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or any combination of these on the other side.

the link to those cards with the students, and they can immediately
There is an automatic audio engine, so any words or sentences access them on their computers, tablets and smartphones.
will appear on the screen along with an option to hear the
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You could also create ‘classes’ using Quizlet and get your
pronunciation. So the students can get both visual and aural input.
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students to sign up. Once they have done so, they can join your class
and access your cards. It is not, however, necessary to do it this way.
Being more creative
Ultimately, Quizlet is about student autonomy, so my
More recently, I have been looking at different ways of using
long-term aim is to get my students so familiar with the tool that
ion

Quizlet. Rather than just using it to teach single words, I have

they can make their own cards – and even make cards for other
started using it with common collocations and sentences. I have
students in the class. I am surprised at just how useful this is
also been looking at ways that it can be used to encourage
when I am studying Polish. The actual act of creating my own
language production. One example that works really well is to
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cards is a cognitive process in itself, and often helps me to learn

create cards with a sentence on one side and a gapped version
the vocabulary quickly. n
of the same sentence on the other. For example:
Pa

If you want to learn how to use Quizlet, you might want to watch
these videos on YouTube:
I eat dinner at I ____ _____ ___
Introduction
six o’clock. ____ o’clock.
www.youtube.com/watch?v=HgdbAFYKJJI&feature=youtu.be
©

Advanced features
www.youtube.com/watch?v=pUBKyvo0cHA&feature=youtu.be
I play my I ____ _____
guitar in the _______ ___ ___ Russell Stannard is the founder of
afternoon. afternoon. www.teachertrainingvideos.com, which
won a British Council ELTons award for
technology. He is a freelance teacher and
The students first see the complete sentence; then they click on a writer and also a NILE Associate Trainer.
button and the card turns over – this time, they only see the first
Keep sending your favourite sites to Russell:
and last words of the sentence. They then have to try to
russellstannard@btinternet.com
reproduce the whole sentence.
I like this activity, as there is a cognitive element to it and, of
course, the students are learning the use of words in sentences.

www.etprofessional.com Issue 120 • January 2019 59

 Not only, but also • • •
Chia Suan Chong looks at what English teachers teach apart from language. In
this issue, she looks at promoting a growth mindset.
I have often heard students and trainees say things like ‘I’m just
bad at languages’, ‘My mother said I’m not the studying type’, ‘I
have a bad memory so I’m not going to be able to remember
vocabulary’, ‘I don’t have the kind of mind that can process
grammar’ and ‘I just can’t multi-task like that’.
They seem to believe that we are born either good or bad at
something, and that ability cannot be changed. They see
mistakes and failures as an epitome of their lack of talent, and
think those with talent ‘have it easy’. Psychologist Carol Dweck
saw these beliefs as symptoms of a fixed mindset, and put
forward the concept of a growth mindset: the belief that talents
and abilities can be developed by putting time and effort into
developing them. Her research into the plasticity of our brains
discovered that connectivity between neurons can be changed
and new connections can be made and strengthened as we work
on them. Those with a growth mindset, therefore, see mistakes
and failure not as signs that one is bad at something but as a
necessary (and desirable) part of the journey to becoming better.
Today, growth mindset has become a bit of a buzzword in
some schools, and students are increasingly encouraged to see
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their potential for development and improvement. But in order to
get students to embrace such a mindset, teachers need to share
the same beliefs and behave accordingly.
• • •
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One method of communicating a growth mindset to our students
lies in the way feedback and praise are given. Giving positive
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feedback like ‘You are so clever’, ‘You are clearly good at this’ or
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‘You have a real talent for this’ could serve to reinforce fixed
mindsets. However, by shifting the feedback to focus on effort,
hard work, strategies used, resourcefulness, perseverance and
experimentation, we could get our students to see the value of
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such traits in their learning journey.
vil
Pa
©
60 Issue 120 • January 2019
• • •
In one set of studies, Claudia Mueller and Carol Dweck found that
12-year-old children praised for their intelligence tended to see
intelligence as a fixed trait more than children praised for their hard
work, who saw intelligence as something that can be improved on.
Compared to the children praised for their effort, those praised for
their intelligence also tended to choose future tasks that were likely
ia
to earn them similar praise, enjoyed the tasks less, and would give
up when the tasks proved to be difficult.
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• • •
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Likewise, the way we give negative (or developmental) feedback
can influence the way our students see setbacks. Statements like
‘You’re terrible at grammar’ or ‘You have such a bad memory! I
just taught you this yesterday!’ might lead students to think
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‘What’s the point of even trying? This is clearly not my forte’.
• • •
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In contrast, developmental feedback can have a real impact on
improvement when the focus is on the future: how learners can
improve and the support they can get to make this possible.
Perhaps the growth mindset is best summarised in the power of
the simple word yet: a word that can make a world of difference
in attitude between ‘You can’t do it’ and ‘You can’t do it yet’.
Mueller, C M and Dweck, C S ‘Praise for intelligence can undermine
children’s motivation and performance’ Journal of Personality and
Social Psychology 75 (1) 1998
Chia Suan Chong is a teacher trainer and communication skills trainer,
based in York, UK. Chia has been ETp’s resident blogger since 2012,
and she is the author of Successful International Communication,
published by Pavilion. You can find out more about a growth mindset
on her blog at etprofessional.co.uk. chiasuan@live.co.uk
www.etprofessional.com
 C om mu n ic at ion Sk i l l s

Successful
International
Communication
Understand and enhance

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your communication skills

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Chia Suan Chong

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H ave you ever felt frustrated talking to

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someone? Have you ever been puzzled by the

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way someone communicates? Communication
issues can be amplified when communicating
internationally with people who have different
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norms and practices to our own, thereby causing
issues to escalate if they are left unresolved.
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Both theoretical and practical, Successful

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International Communication is filled with easy-

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to-relate-to anecdotes and discussions on the use

of English as a global language and the key issues
of intercultural communication. It also explores
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different interpersonal skills such as relationship

building and conflict management skills, to help
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speakers of English worldwide become better

international communicators.
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Who is the book for?

©

„ Anyone who communicates internationally

(for work or social purposes)
„ Language teachers and teacher trainers
„ Communication trainers
NEW

Order today for just £16.95

Order now: www.pavpub.com/successful-international-communication/
Email: info@pavpub.com
Call: 01273 434 943
Te a c h i n g E n g l i s h

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M
nd
ga
hin
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Supporting you with

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ELT theory and practice

ion
vil
Pa
©

www.pavpub.com/english-language/