By Mary Kay Seales, Senior English Language Fellow

Basic Interpersonal Communication Skills Academic Language Proficiency Professional Language Proficiency

What kind of language skills are being tested on the exam? Let’s get very specific about this. What exact skills are you aiming for with your books and curriculum?

How do you teach all the skills required on the exam, while completing the textbooks in ten months including holidays, and also improve students’ speaking, listening, reading and writing skills?

Which of the above is most important?

If you have to leave one thing out, what will it be?

Teach the skills that are being tested at the end of the term. Improve students’ English speaking, listening, reading and

writing proficiency

Do it in the time you have with the students

Use the textbooks whenever possible to save time, but feel free to pick and choose so long as you are covering the objectives of the course, i.e, those things they will be tested on

Activities that require that students use the target language in a meaningful way:

Pair work and Group work Projects that are student-driven Brainstorming Information gap Information gathering (research; interviews) Opinions/sharing activities Debates Role plays

Teacher as facilitator in the classroom Students are active, motivated learners Target language is used as well as heard

Controlled chaos/Productive noise

Responsibility for learning is shared by the students and

teacher (learner autonomy)

Fluency task: Provide meaningful situations for students to use the target language. Example: Each student is assigned a role to play. The situation is a traffic accident. One student is the policeman, another the driver, another a bicyclist who was almost hit, another is a witness, etc.

Accuracy task: Focus on teaching forms. Example: Teacher explains a grammar point. Then the students try to complete a worksheet in which they have to choose the correct answers for the blanks. The teacher goes over the answers with the students.

Mechanical: controlled practice of a language lesson (i.e., a grammar point)

Meaningful: the students practice the new grammar point in a meaningful way, i.e., practice prepositions by describing things on a map (the grocery store is next to…, etc)

Communicative: Students use the new grammar point in a real situation, i.e, draw a map of their own neighborhood and explain where things are in writing, speaking,…

Language competency means that students are able to call on all their language skills, and use whatever skills a given situation requires

Focus on one area (for example grammar or reading) may lead to higher test scores on the a test, but does not necessarily lead to the ability to use the language in real situations

A content module is a set of tasks for the classroom that focuses on one theme or topic.

The goal of a content module is to increase student competence in all the language skill areas while engaged in “realistic” tasks.

Content modules combine conscious learning with unconscious acquisition of the target language.

Content Modules integrate the four skills (and then some) Content Modules provide meaningful, interesting and

relevant communicative tasks They can be designed to focus on the language goals of the

teacher/course (think about the exam) Students can become empowered and engaged by being

involved with topics that matter to them

Issues: Love marriage versus Arranged Marriage

Literature: based one one or more stories or novels History: The life and work of Gandhi Music: The History of Jazz in America Art: Modern Art, Artists The law/crime: The Death Penalty

Generate student interest in the module topic

Present an overview of the module’s purpose and tasks to the students, or let them help think about a project they could do on this topic

Always introduce the language tools students will need to complete the tasks as you need them (grammar, speaking, writing, etc.)

Clearly outline tasks for the module and set clear timelines for completion

Evaluate students in a way that is both encouraging and motivating. Perfection is not the goal, the goal is to provide situations for the students to use the target language

Be ready to change course if things aren’t working, to keep momentum and energy

Theme of the module

Pedagogical focus (what do you want students to practice exactly)

Tasks for students to complete (are they doable and have you provided them with the skills to do them)

Sequence of tasks

Time Required to complete the module

Outcome or product

Evaluation

Module Theme: Women in the Developing World

Time to complete module: 2 -3 weeks Skills to cover: Internet Research

Reading Skills: Annotation

Writing Skills: Summary, Definition, Data Commentary, Outlining & Planning, Argumentative Essay

Speaking Skills: Presentation, Class Discussion, Pair work, Group work

1) Introduce theme: class discussion on issues for women in the developing world; why is this important for everyone to think about this?; what are the issues?; which countries shall we focus on?; how serious is this issue?; etc.

Purpose: to get student ‘buy-in’

Students are given an article on women’s issues for the New York Times Magazine (3 pages in length)

Teacher introduces annotation and how important this skill is for college level reading; shows students how to annotate an article; practice in class with first page of the article; homework is to annotate the article for the next day, underlining all the organizations concerning women’s issues mentioned

Next day: Discussion of the article; students are put into pairs or groups and given questions about the reading to find and answer; Whole group discusses answers

Questions should be simple, not analytical at

this point; you want to keep the serous work for later when students are interested and working on their own projects

Students are asked to choose one organization from the article to research (or teacher can assign one to a group or pair);

Homework is to find information on this

organization: Teacher should provide a worksheet or outline of what he/she wants

Who started this organization? Where is it based? What are their stated goals? What do they do exactly? Examples? When was it founded? How is it funded?

Students will create a poster (or a power point

presentation) the next day in class with their group on this organization, and present it to the class.

Teacher discusses how to write a one-paragraph summary step by step (for example, break the article into parts, summarize the parts, write a topic sentence with the author, title and publishing info, etc).

Together students and teacher write a summary of the article

they read, with the teachers leading the students and writing on the board; students help think of what to write (or have one of the students writing as you decide)

Give the students another article on the issue (short, one page) and ask them to annotate this article for the next day (to review this skill)

Next day: Have students discuss the article in groups, break the article into main ideas, and write a summary of the article together

Students and teacher again write a summary with student input

Teacher hands out graph about women’s issue for students to look at along with a set of questions (group work)

Teacher discusses how to write a data commentary

(i.e., a paragraph which summarizes a graph)

Together class writes a commentary Homework: Find a graph or data about women’s issues

to bring to class the next day (or you can provide a graph and ask them to practice data commentary)

write together in class the next day

Teacher continues to weave skills she wants to teach students with content of the module.

Movies, documentaries can help increase student interest and motivation

There should be a final project that students will complete as part of the module.

Students choose one country or one organization to focus on, and create a portfolio of writing assignments related to this.

This will be the topic for the papers in the class, as the teacher introduces new writing skills, the students will add to their portfolio on that country or organization (for example, a definition of the problem, some data and an explanation of the data, a summary of an article related to their topic, etc)

Students are evaluated by completion of the project. This can be some kind of portfolio that includes samples of all the skills you have covered: summary of an article on their specific project; a data commentary on a graph related to their topic; a 5 – 10 minute presentation on their topic (individual or group)

Completion and effort, rather than perfection,

should be the key to a good grade.

You already have to do something in the classroom. Why not enjoy it?

Engaging for students and teachers Language learning happens You can use the materials you already have You can repeat and improve the module,

saving time the next time it is used You can cover the skills you want to cover

for the exam

Design a set of activities based on a theme that you think your students would be interested in. It does not need to be a serious topic on the face of it. You can make any topic more serious by the activities you choose.

Think STUDENT INTEREST

You must include: 5 activities (Think about exam objectives) At least one movie or documentary Speaking, Listening, Reading, Writing