#ukesol chat summary: Tuesday 2nd October

Are these people  relevant?

The subject of Tuesday's #ukesolchat was:
"Making Courses Relevant for Learners." The chat took place at 9pm GMT and was congenially moderated by @dianatremayne. Participants were: @teacherthom, @samshep, @ShetlandEsol, @harrisonmike, @cathywint, @MelKirkwood, @hooperchris and @pysproblem81.





Surely all ESOL teachers strive towards creating lessons relevant to the needs and interests of the individual learners who make up their classes. In last Tuesday's #ukesolchat, teachers got together to discuss the best way of working towards this aim.  A lively chat ensued: what follows is my attempt to summarise the main points. Sincere apologies if I have missed anything out!

 Needs Analyses

An in-depth needs analyses is key to establishing a teaching programme which meets the learners' needs. @hooperchris suggested that our starting point has to be asking the learners. @MelKirkwood agreed: noting the importance too of "getting to know the learners" and what they do when they are not in the classroom. 

So then, what exactly are we seeking to establish in our initial analyses? @hooperchris wished to stress that we should not limit ourselves to addressing the language needs of the learners. @samshep, however, felt that language  should remain at the forefront, and pointed out that "we can’t do stuff without language to do it.”@samshep went on to argue that learners often don’t have a sufficient “meta awareness” of language to pinpoint their own linguistic needs. 

@dianatremayne raised the issue of conflicts between the needs and wants of learners and the course they are doing: a very important point for teachers who work towards certificated courses. As @dianatremayne pointed out, "some courses can be hard to make exciting..."

Making Syllabi Relevant

Some interesting ideas came out of this thread. @samshep suggested starting with themes and topics, then identifying and sequencing language items in order of complexity within these themes. @samshep makes a mindmap of learners' needs and ideas for content which he then "whittles into a scheme." This seems like a neat idea, which puts the learners' interests at the very heart of the process.

@cathywint summarised @samshep's idea very neatly by suggesting that in this scenario, themes come from the learners and language areas from the teacher. 

@psyproblems81, however, felt that "getting carried away with themes" might put teachers in danger of  forgetting about language.   

Local Language, Local Accents

 Can you follow the dialogue in this short  film made by a group of Shetlanders?

This thread of the discussion was kicked off by @dianatremayne whose students had recently  interviewed staff members, and had struggled to understand the one Scottish accent! @ShetlandEsol felt that it was important to focus on building learners’ awareness of the accents they would be most likely to come into contact to on a daily basis.

@cathywint suggested the UK ESOL website as a rich source of authentic listening material, and duly found the link: http://www.esoluk.co.uk/

Teachers can make good use of the learners' surrounding environment to raise awareness of local language and accents. @MelKirkwood suggested asking learners to note down phrases and expressions they overhear when out and about: e.g. on the buses. This can then be extended into a classroom activity, where learners teach each other the new lexis they have learned. 

 The next #ukesolchat?

@ShetlandEsol wondered how teachers adapted ELT resources in order to make them relevant for ESOL learners. It soon became apparent from the quick barrage of responses that there is enough material here for a #ukesolchat in itself, and @dianatremayne suggested this as a possibility for next time.

Further Reading/Resources

 @cathywint suggested the Reflect for ESOL resource pack: a fantastic resource which aims to put learners at the centre of their learning.

http://www.reflect-action.org/~reflecta/sites/default/files/u6/Reflect%2520for%2520ESOL%2520Resource%2520Pack-1.pdf

This was the first time I had participated in a #ukesolchat and I really enjoyed meeting other ESOL practitioners. Till next time!

photo credit: <a href="http://www.flickr.com/photos/scottphotos/755731653/">lairdscott</a> via <a href="http://photopin.com">photopin</a> <a href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/2.0/">cc</a>

A Nice Lesson

So far I have resisted the temptation to plunge head first into a creative writing activity with my newish pre-intermediate class. In keeping with my "softly softly" approach, last night I decided to work on another element of writing with which learners sometimes struggle: adjectives.

In my experience, two common learner difficulties with adjectives are:

• An over reliance on one adjective: nice seems to be a particular favourite!
• A lack of awareness of appropriate adjective + noun collocations, e.g.: strong headache, angry argument etc.

I decided to use Jane Richard's simple yet highly effective lesson idea to help me out here:

http://www.onestopenglish.com/community/lesson-share/pdf-content/writing/writing-a-nice-story-lesson-plan/156998.article

This lesson uses two short stories "A Nice Story" and "A Bad Day" to illustrate how an over reliance on high frequency adjectives such as nice, bad and good can make writing bland and uninteresting. I typed up "A Nice Story" on the white board, and we read it together.

A nice story

It was a nice day so Mary decided to go for a nice walk in the nice park near her house. She thought it was a nice idea to phone her friend Jenny so that after their nice walk they could go for a nice coffee in one of the nice cafés which were near the edge of the town.

The learners found the story dull, and were able to tell me why!  I went on to distribute A3 sheets of paper, each bearing a single word in the centre: walk, park, idea, coffee and cafe. The learners worked in pairs to brainstorm alternative adjectives, using a marker pen to note their suggestions. After a minute, the pairs had to move around to next piece of paper and add further suggestions. After a few minutes we had plenty of suggestions to work with, and it was now our task to eliminate the adjectives which didn't quite work, e.g. crooked walk (we settled on meandering in the end!)

After this, we followed a similar procedure to write the story "A Bad Day". We came up with some excellent collocations, such as violent argument, pounding headache and lousy day to replace bad.

Adjective noun collocation is equally important for spoken production: I will be thinking of ways to orally review and recycle these new lexical items in tomorrow's lesson.

An UP- beat Writing Class

My class and I were in the process of filing back into class after coffee break when I announced that we’d be doing some writing in the second half of the lesson. I am aware that we’ve neglected writing these past few weeks, and I am keen to integrate this skill into our lessons on a regular basis. What’s more, as many of my learners exhibit the “spiky profiles” so common in ESOL, it seems sensible to tackle the writing skill head on. 

However, my announcement met with groans all round. A few expressed a sudden desire to go home, while others just looked mutely miserable. Their reaction did not dishearten me. I have been teaching writing in the ESOL class for several years, and I am used to learners' initial reluctance.  Yet, my experience has also taught me how this initial attitude towards writing can change when learners realise they are not being "tested" or expected to produce a perfect first draft.

  

What We Did

This lesson was diagnostic, and when I set out I had no definite idea of what area of writing I would be focusing on. However, I did have two clear aims:

• To make a diagnosis of learners’ writing needs based on a longer piece of free writing.
• To show learners that writing need not be a lonely and stressful activity 

We watched a short clip from the animated Pixar film: Up. This clip has no dialogue at all, and once learners realised this they visibly relaxed!

• After watching the film, we brainstormed some of the vocabulary the learners thought they might need if they wanted to retell this story. We came up with: to save money, to break a leg, to fall in love, to be in love, to get married as well as adjectives such as caring, adventurous etc.
• I gave learners fifteen minutes to write the story of what they had just seen. Everyone had to write, but I encouraged groups to confer and share ideas.
• After fifteen minutes, some looked as if they might be about to run out of steam. I collected in a few pieces, and quickly skimmed them, looking to see if I could find a common writing need. This was easy enough. Below is a fairly representative writing sample:

 They got married in a church.  They fixed their house. They lost a baby and were very sad. They start saving money for them holidays, but it wasn't good adea cos was always something happen to them and they had to spend their money for this problem. The old lady got sick and died. 

This short sample shows a common problem in learners' writing: that of coherence. Quite often, I have found, learners produce pieces of writing in which the sentences are grammatically correct when viewed in isolation but just don’t “hang together” very well. (Raimes, 1983 p.56)

After typing this sample onto the interactive whiteboard, I read it aloud. I told learners I was confused. Who were "they?" When did "they" get married? When and why did they fix their house? The learners were easily able to answer these questions, and working together we produced the piece of writing shown below. I highlighted the time expressions and linking device, to further raise learners' awareness.

A long time ago, two young people got married in a beautiful church. They had a lovely wedding and most people were very happy. After their wedding they were still very happy, and they renovated their house. It was the house of their dreams.

One morning in their favourite place, they were looking at the sky and they decided to have a lot of babies. After trying very hard, the doctor told them the bad news: they couldn’t have children.

For a long time they were very sad, but they realised that their lives had to continue. The husband showed his wife her old adventure book, and they decided to save money for an adventure. But they had a lot of problems. First, the car broke down. After that, the house was damaged in a storm.  Then the husband broke his leg. They spent their money on fixing these problems. 

They got older and older, and they never got close to their dream. At last, the husband bought tickets for their dream trip.

Finally, the old lady got sick. Sadly, she died, and they never went on their journey.

I photocopied and distributed our revised version of the story, so that learners could compare this version to their original at home. We will do more work on cohesive links and writing in next Tuesday's class. This short film activity was a very good starting point, and will hopefully have gone some way to banishing learners' writing reluctance!

Further Reading 

White, R and Arndt V, 1997 Process Writing, Longman

Raimes, A.  1983 Techniques in Teaching Writing, Oxford University Press