An Activity for Teacher Trainers



Here you will find an activity that I learned while I was doing Pilgrims ‘Humanizing Testing’ course in the UK. I also came across a similar version of the activity in the forum journal (October 2003, volume: 41/ number: 4)

Here is the procedure given in the forum journal:

‘1.The list below contains a variety of statements about teaching and learning. Select some of them and prepare small posters, laminated cards, an overhead transparency, or another way of displaying them for all participants to see.

2. Ask participants to choose, or  stand next to, the statement they feel most strongly about (often it is difficult to decide).Then ask them to work with someone else who chose the same statement, and spend a few minutes discussing why they chose that one. If time permits, in pairs they can describe any personal experiences that illustrate the statement and/or write their reaction to the statement.

3. Conclude with a discussion of all the displayed statements. Ask participants to share their opinions, focusing on the principles of teaching and learning exemplified by each one.

4. For an alternative or extension of the activity, first prepare envelopes that contain each of the statements on a separate strip of paper. Then divide participants into small groups, giving one envelope to each group. Ask groups to categorize the statements and create titles for each category. Again, ask participants to share their opinions, this time focusing on the principles of teaching and learning exemplified by the categories.’

And here are some of the statements given in the same journal:

‘Teach students not materials’

‘Don’t be a sage on the stage!’

‘Students do not care how much you know until they know how much you care.’

‘The least loveable children are often the ones who need to be loved most.’

‘He who asks a question is a fool for five minutes; he who does not ask a question remains a fool forever.’

‘To learn is to change. Education is a process that changes the learner (George B. Leonard)

‘I cannot teach anyone anything; I can only make them think. (Socrates)

‘To teach is to learn twice.’ (Joseph Joubert)

Here is my adaptation of the procedure:

·        Find some statements about your topic (In my session, it was Constructivism)

·        Write the statements on big cards

·        Stick them on the walls

·        Ask participants to walk around, read the statements and choose the one they feel most strongly about

·        Then ask them to work in pairs and spend a few minutes discussing why they chose that one.

·        Then each participant reports back to class.

Here are the statements I used for my session:

‘Learners come to learning situations with knowledge gained from previous experience, and that prior knowledge influences what new or modified knowledge they will construct from new learning experiences.’

‘People learn only if they are ready to learn.’

‘Constructivism's central idea is that human learning is constructed, that learners build new knowledge upon the foundation of previous learning.’

‘Teaching cannot be viewed as the transmission of knowledge from enlightened to unenlightened’

‘Learning is active rather than passive. Learners confront their understanding in light of what they encounter in the new learning situation. If what learners encounter is inconsistent with their current understanding, their understanding can change to accommodate new experience.’

‘It is up to the teacher to facilitate the constructivist learning process. The structure of the learning environment should promote opportunities and events that encourage and support the building of understanding.’

‘Students construct their own understanding and knowledge of the world through experiencing things and reflecting on those experiences.’

‘Learning is always being taught in a way where students can build on what they already know’

‘We’ll never know how the world really is. We always have to construct what we think the world really is.’ (Jerome Bruner)

‘Teachers must note that knowledge and provide learning environments that exploit inconsistencies between learners' current understandings and the new experiences before them. This challenges teachers; for they cannot assume that all children understand something in the same way. Further, children may need different experiences to advance to different levels of understanding.’

“Constructivism is a philosophy of learning founded on the premise that by reflecting on our experiences, we construct our own understanding of the world we live in. '

'Constructivists believe that based on prior experiences and knowledge, meaningful learning takes place when individuals construct their own meaning, rather than memorize answers and regurgitate what they’ve been taught.'

THE UNBEARABLE LIGHTNESS OF FREE TEXT MESSAGES (in the classroom)

This post is the second part of 'Activities using mobile phones in the classroom.'

I'm just not the type of person who can send five text messages in five seconds:)My  younger colleagues can text like in seconds [Today,I literally spent five minutes to send a simple text to my colleague -Nisa- and she texted me back approximately ten seconds later!].My students are a lot faster.

The thing I did not understand at first was why university students text their friends  instead of simply calling them?

Then what I realised was a completely OBVIOUS  answer

Telecommunication companies with their  'latest'offers (5000 free texts a day!)might be the reason why teenagers prefer texting to actually calling others.

So why not take advantage of this?

I used this activity after we covered 'Would you like...'

 Here are the steps:

• Ask students if they have free text messages (90% of your students will probably say 'YES')
• Pair your students 
•  Ask them to take out their mobiles
• Each pair chooses another pair and sends them a text
• Pairs start exchanging text messages.
• The activity goes on as long as your students want. (Sometimes they may end up exchanging five or six texts)

A sample student dialogue:

• Hello, we are going to the cinema on Tuesday with Canan. Would you like to come?
• oh, sorry. We can't come. We are meeting Ahmet on Tuesday.
• Okay, see you.
• Next time see you

GROUP WORK ACTIVITIES (VIDEO)

In the following videos, you will find my students (GAZI UNIVERSITY-PREP SCHOOL, CLASSROOM 30) doing group work.

Here is what they are doing in the video:

There are three groups and each group is given two different sets of coloured paper.  They are supposed to make two correct sentences using the words/phrases on the coloured paper.

During the activity, I let my students listen whatever they like. ( And their music choice is fine by me as long as it motivates them)

Since the sentences are the same,  group members are hiding behind the curtain:)

                                                                         

 Although I was recording them during this activity, it could be easily noticed that students do not feel nervous  at all. They seem to be having fun.

I would like to thank my star STUDENTS:

DENIZ : FOR HIS POLITENESS AND HARD WORK AND ALSO FOR DOING SPORTS:)

RAMAZAN: FOR HIS HARD WORK AND GETTING VERY GOOD GRADES ( YOU ARE A REAL STAR)

ISMAIL: FOR HIS JOKES AND CHEEKY MOVES:)

TOLGA: FOR HIS VERY LONG AND INTERESTING SENTENCES

CANAN: FOR HANDS OUTS

DUYGU: FOR HER GOOD GRADES

AY: FOR HER DETERMINATION

ESRA: FOR BEING VERY COMPETITIVE

AYSE: FOR HER QUESTIONS

BUSRA: FOR HER

WE WILL DO THE REST TOMORROW:)

BREAK YOUR CHAINS (PAIR WORK)

AFTER SOME TIME, PAIR WORK CAN ACTUALLY BE VERY VERY   BORING FOR YOUR STUDENTS IF YOU ARE DOING A LOT OF PAIR WORK ACTIVITIES IN YOUR LESSONS

AND AGAIN

PAIR WORK CAN ACTUALLY BE VERY VERY   BORING FOR YOUR STUDENTS IF THEY ARE LEARNING ENGLISH FROM 9.30 AM TO 3.30 PM EVERY DAY (OMG!)

                               

I believe there could be several reasons for that:

• Doing pair-work may not be real life like anymore because students are tired of working with the more or less same people.You can obviously pair a student with a different student but well.....after some time -based on my observations- students  might get bored anyway.
• They may simply  not feel 'that excited' anymore about doing pair works.
• No matter what you do they may still end up speaking in their native tongue during the activities esp when you are working with monolingual students.
• It could be boring if you have a small class (4-5 students)
• Students who know each other well might start chatting instead of doing the activity.

So what I have been doing recently to overcome this challenge:

1. I and my students visit other classrooms and say 'Hello neighbour, we are here to ask you a couple of questions:)'

 

                          

How do I do it?

To illustrate the point, two examples are given below but you might as well come up with your own ideas and leave me a comment on how you did it and how it went. Here is how:

• I informed a colleague earlier. We arranged a proper day and time together.
• During the lesson my students wrote down some interview questions (by themselves)
• We all went to the other classroom together.
• When we entered, I greeted the teacher and the students and asked the teacher if my students could ask a few questions to her students.
• Then my students started interviewing the other students.
• I asked my students beforehand to interview with at least three people.
• When they finished the activity, we thanked the class and went back to our classroom.
• Each student reported back to the class.
• After they reported back, each students talked about his/her experience: what he/she learned from the students he/she had interviewed and also what he/she taught the students he/she had interviewed.

2. My students wrote and sent note cards to two other classes. Here is how I did it:

A task from English Unlimited Elementary Coursebook pg:24/ 5

'You decide to use Sofasurfing.com to find a place to stay in another country. Write an e-mail to your host.

• Give information about yourself
• Ask two or three questions
• Check your e-mail. Are the capital letters correct?'

1.  My students  did the task(they wrote two copies) but instead of reading his/her pair's email and writing a reply, a student collected all the students note cards and went to other classrooms (Let's say classroom B and C).
2.  Class B and C read my students note cards and wrote replies.Then a student from classroom B collected the replies and got them back to my classroom and gave it to me. And a student from classroom C did the same thing.
3. I distributed the replies to my students and they  chose the one they would like to stay at. 
4. After the activity finished, each student worked with a partner and corrected grammar mistakes in the e-mails (replies as well).
5. A classroom discussion about the corrections of grammar mistakes and also things we learned from this experience.                    

GRAMMAR OR GRAMMER? MISTAKE OR ERROR?SHALL I CORRECT IT OR NOT?

                                                       MISTAKE OR ERROR

                                                                      

In some cases, teachers may not decide to treat an error because the difference between errors and mistakes are not always clear. James (1998:79) makes a useful distinction and says:

'Errors, one must assume, are everything that mistakes are not; they are of significance ;they do not reflect knowledge; they are not self-correctable; and only learners of L2 make them.'

                                                 HOW TO CORRECT ERRORS

                                                   

And how to correct errors depends largely on the context. Whether to correct errors or not depends on the kind of learners and the linguistic level of students, as Tsui (1995:48) puts it:

‘For students with low language proficiency it would be unreasonable to expect error- free sentences. For students who are very shy and reticent it is more important to get them to express themselves rather than produce correct forms.’

According to James (1998:236) the term correction is used in three senses:

·         Informing the learner that there is an error and leaving them to discover and repair it themselves. This is called feedback.

·         Providing treatment or information that leads to the revision and correction of the specific instance of error (error token)without aiming to prevent the error from reoccurring later.

·         Providing learners with information that allows them to revise or reject the wrong rule they were operating with when they produced the error token. Since its purpose is primarily to improve the processes for all future productions rather than merely ‘cosmetically’ to improve the present product, this is called remediation.’

In the classroom, students may sometimes try to form sentences which have just been introduced to them or try to utter sentences which have not been covered in the classroom and make mistakes or errors. In situations like these it may be time consuming and also not useful to give any sorts of feedback as it may not make any sense to the learner, as Allwright and Bailey (1991:102) suggests:

‘Another question which teachers face in deciding whether to treat an error or to ignore it is whether the error is within the learner’s grasp in terms of his or her place on the interlaguage continuum.  It may do no good at all to try to give learners feedback on a form they are not ready to learn.’

I believe how to  correct the errors of performance is important because students need to be encouraged to speak without being defensive and thinking about assessment. Norrish (1983:116) states about the correction of speech errors:

' ...when the learner is more concerned with expressing a meaning, importing some information or opinion, that he is with the forms of language he is using for that purpose, he should not be stopped or corrected in 'mid-stream'

A teacher might consider an utterance an error whereas another teacher may accept the utterance as Norrish (1983:91) states:

'There may be times when one judge or teacher will consider a given form an error, while another would consider it acceptable. Since language constantly changes and develops, what is considered 'incorrect' today may be acceptable tomorrow.'

The best example of it is I guess:

             

    TEACHER'S PERCEPTION IS IMPORTANT

 Another related issue is that it may be more significant from a teacher's perception to expect the correct answers for a particular exercise or an activity even when it may be a suitable utterance in the target language as Tsui (1995:43) comments:

'An error in the classroom is commonly understood as something that is rejected by the teacher because it is wrong and inappropiate. However, when classroom exchanges are examined it is found that what teachers consider being errors may not be wrong or inappropiate at all.'

Thank you Susan from Karatay University for giving  me the idea to think and write about this issue.

HOW I CORRECT MY STUDENTS' SCRIPTS

Here is a task for students:
Level: high intermediate- upper intermediate

J-14 is a magazine for teenagers and they are organizing a competition. They are going to choose the ‘Writer of the Month’ and the winner will get 5000 TL. You want to join to this competition. Write a PARAGRAPH about ‘My ideal girl/boyfriend’ in 130-150 words.

In your paragraph mention these points:

·         What is he/she like?

·         What does he/she look like?

·         What do you want to do with him/her in your free time?

Here is a sample answer:

I imagine that my boyfriend is loyal and honest. Because Honesty is a virtue. So honesty is very important to me. Besides I should trust him. He should be trusted man. Then, He should be a determined person. That is he would rather he decides for anything than I decide. That is he should direct me. As I am very undecided. My imaginary boyfriend should appreciate me. He should give value me even if he does not love me in a crazy love. And... He should not be selfish. On the contrary he should be thoughtfull. He should be calm.He should give peace me. Because I need to peace....Finally,I can not know when I will fall in love with whom....So, they are my imagines....But my imagines may not realize......

Here is my feedback to the student:

1. SCORE FOR TASK ACHIEVEMENT: 4

JUSTIFICATION:

·         You wrote a semi-formal paragraph which is polite and consistent in its style.

 ·         However, of the three content points only one of them is included: What is he/she like? ADD THE OTHER TWO CONTENT POINTS: What does he look like? / What do you want to do with him in your free time?

·         You elaborate on only one of the content points: ‘What is he like?’ ADD AND ELABORATE ON THE OTHER CONTENT POINTS

·         The layout is appropriate for this kind of task.

·         The closing section is inadequate ‘So, they are my imagines....But my imagines may not realize......’ =YOU MAY WANT TO CHANGE IT. Or PARAPHRASE IT.

·         Word limit is between 130-150 words = no problem with your word limit.

2. SCORE FOR ORGANIZATION (COHERENCE& COHESION): 4 (out of 10)

JUSTIFICATION:

·         You should use reference: It establishes a link between a sentence or between two or more sentences. For example: Instead of saying:  ‘I saw a dog yesterday. The dog was black.’ You should say ‘I saw a dog yesterday. It was black’ = (It refers back to ‘a dog’) AVOID REPEATING THE SAME WORDS. In your paragraph: ‘I imagine that my boyfriend is loyal and honest. Because Honesty is a virtue. So honesty is very important’ = USE REFERENCE INSTEAD = DO NOT REPEAT THE SAME WORD OVER AND OVER AGAIN= IT DISRUPTS COHESION.

·         You use linking devices: (because, so, besides, then, that is, as, and, on the contrary, finally, so, but): DO NOT OVERUSE THE LINKING DEVICES= IT MAKES YOUR SCRIPT ARTIFICIAL.

·         TRY NOT TO START A SENTENCE WITH ‘BECAUSE/ AND = INFORMALLY THEY MIGHT BE OKAY. IN YOUR CASE, YOU DONT NEED TO START A SENTENCE WITH THEM.FOR EXAMPLE: ‘He should give peace me. Because I need to peace.’= PARAPHRASE IT. DO NOT START WITH BECAUSE.

·         ‘Then, He should be a determined person’ =INCORRECT USE OF THE LINKING DEVICE. ‘THEN’ IS USED TO SHOW TIME: ‘We drank coffee and then we left (CORRECT USE OF THE LINKING DEVICE)

                                     Or:

§  Then is used to say what happens next or what you do next: For example: Mix the flour and butter, then add the eggs. = (CORRECT USE OF THE LINKING DEVICE)

§  WHEN YOU TRANSLATE YOUR SENTENCE IN TURKISH, IT MAY SOUND CORRECT, BUT IN ENGLISH IT SOUNDS AWKWARD= CHANGE IT.

·         ‘That is he would rather he decides for anything than I decide. That is he should direct me.’= REPETITION OF THE SAME LINKING DEVICE = CHANGE ONE OF THEM or PARAPHRASE YOUR SENTENCES or COMBINE THEM IN ANOTHER WAY. PAY ATTENTION TO YOUR PUNCTUATION: That is (,) he would.....

·         BE CAREFUL WITH YOUR PUNCTUATION: ‘On the contrary(,) he should be thoughtful’

·         ‘Because I need to peace....Finally,I can not know when I will fall in love with whom....So, they are my imagines....But my imagines may not realize......’ = DO YOU ACTUALLY NEED ALL THESE (......) ?? = DO NOT OVERUSE THEM(.......)

·         ‘That is he should direct me. As I am very undecided.’ = YOU DO NOT NECESSARILY HAVE TO START A SENTENCE WITH ‘AS’ HERE. = COMBINE THESE TWO SENTENCES.

·         BE CAREFUL WITH CAPITILIZATION = IT ALSO DISRUPTS COHERENCE: ‘Because Honesty is a virtue’ or ‘Then, He should be a determined person’ = CHECK AND CORRECT YOUR CAPITIZATION MISTAKES AGAIN.

·         ‘thoughtfull’ = IS THIS THE CORRECT SPELLING? CHECK YOUR PARAGRAPH FOR SPELLING MISTAKES AGAIN

3. GRAMMAR:

           JUSTIFICATIONS FOR GRAMMAR: 7 (out of 10)

·         Correct use of simple present tense, future (will) and ‘should’ = APPROPIATE FOR THIS TYPE OF TASK.

·         Should is overused = TRY TO USE SOMETHING ELSE INSTEAD OF ‘SHOULD’. For example: I’d rather a man who..... / I prefer / It’s better.... ./ must..etc.

·         ‘He should be trusted man’ DO YOU NEED AN ARTICLE HERE? A/AN?

·         THERE ARE CLUMSY BITS: (1) ‘That is he would rather he decides for anything than I decide.’/(2) He should give value me even if he does not love me in a crazy love = PARTIALLY DISRUPTS COMMUNICATION = PARAPHRASE IT= BE CAREFUL WITH YOUR GRAMMAR:

(1)   He would rather or you would rather? Than you decide or that you decide? CHECK THE EXAMPLES, AND HAVE A LOOK AT SOME GRAMMAR BOOKS =REWRITE YOUR SENTENCE: I’d rather go by car./  I’d rather not go out tonight/ I’d rather (someone) +v2 =present/future meaning. Ex: I’d rather he went by bus.

(2)   ‘LOVE ME IN A CRAZY LOVE’ = OR IN A CRAZY WAY? LOVE YOU CRAZILY?

·           BE CAREFUL WITH PREPOSTIONS: ‘He should give peace me.’ = HE SHOULD GIVE ME PEACE or HE SHOULD GIVE PEACE TO ME. / ANOTHER EXAMPLE: ‘GIVE ME A DATE or GIVE A DATE TO ME’

·           ‘Because I need to peace’ = OMIT ‘TO’

4. VOCABULARY: 8 (out of 10)

JUSTIFICATIONS FOR VOCABULARY:

Regarding your level:

·         Relevant vocabulary choice

·         Variety of adjectives are used

·         ‘As I am very undecided.’ = ARE YOU UNDECIDED OR INDECISIVE? CHECK THE MEANING OF THESE WORDS

·         ‘But my imagines may not realize......’= WRITE A FULL SENTENCE = IT IS NOT A PROPER ENDING. THERE IS NOT ENOUGH CONTEXT (SENTENCES, WORDS) TO UNDERSTAND WHY YOU USE ‘REALIZE’ THERE?

·         ‘So, they are my imagines’ = WRONG WORD = CHANGE IT

5. Communicative function:

 If you were the editor of J-14 magazine, would you give 5000 TL to this paragraph? 5pts. (out of 10)

IN TOTAL: 28 x2 = 56pts.

ALL IN ALL, THIS IS A GOOD PARAGRAPH AND MEETS MOST OF THE CRITERIA.

READ THROUGH THE COMMENTS, AND MAKE THE NECESSARY CORRECTIONS.

As teachers obviously we may not always have the

time to give our students a detailed feedback.

However, at least trying to do it from time to time

shows that you are taking writing seriously. And yes

it does make a difference in their perceptions

of writing.