English is cool! – Frank Lacey
Passion is contagiousIt is crucial that students can sense your enthusiasm for your subject, so make it obvious that you are wild about your subject. I have the privilege of teaching not only English but also German. The latter is a subject which has a poor image in Denmark, where I teach. I honestly do not know why, as I love German and regularly tell my students and their parents that 'Deutsch ist cool!' Learners admire passion; it is contagious. Humanity and humour are keyTeachers must develop a respectful relationship with each and every student and expect them to succeed to the maximum of their ability. Share your own personal language experiences with your students. Make it obvious how language learning has added to your life. And make it explicit that you expect them to feel as enthusiastic as you. At the same time remember that 'listening to a person is the single most powerful transaction that occurs between ourselves and another person that tells that individual that we accept him as a human being' (Wlodkowski, 1986:28). Humour is an often neglected but very important element in a secure learning environment. Humour does not mean telling jokes and playing the clown (although both are permissible from time to time). Humour has more to do with the teacher having a relaxed attitude and not taking him/herself too seriously. This means that the teacher has to be comfortable with his/her self image and ability. Competition is intimidatingI work with teenagers every day. They are often very insecure people battling to come to terms with their own self-perceived failings. In many language classrooms these same insecure people are requested to indulge in ridiculous face-losing exercises in a foreign language where they feel incompetent. At times classrooms whose aim is to facilitate learning have more in common with military training. Students are made to perform tasks because the teacher says so. 'In civilian contexts, the usual way of asking people to do something involves communicating good reasons’ (Dörnyei, 2001). Teachers must strive to create a group story. A class of students must move from a group of competing individuals to a team with a common goal. We all perform best when we believe in our chance of success and the same is true of learning. If you spread the responsibility from the individual to the group then the chances of the individual achieving success are increased, since he or she is supported by the others. According to Arnes (1992) and Covington (1992) most motivation researchers say, contrary to what many people believe, that ‘there is nothing healthy about even a small dose of competition, whenever students are busy avoiding the feelings of failure, or attempting to make others fail, there is little room for true involvement in learning.’ Cooperative learning is the way forwardThese days cooperative learning is the buzz word. We read about it everywhere in didactic journals, but in my opinion much of what is presented under the name of cooperative learning is group work which is teacher developed, teacher controlled, and teacher evaluated. In other words, the learners have little or no share in the learning objectives. Cooperative learning in my opinion means having a cohesive class in which each student has a feeling of belonging, which in turn encourages an obligation to contribute to the common goal: learning. I feel that autonomy is crucial in bringing students to take responsibility for their learning and for the learning of their peers. When students themselves are allowed to define their goals and evaluate their success in cooperation with their peers then they can they take ownership of their learning. Freedom to choose is a prerequisite to motivation. In an autonomous environment where students assist each other the individual is not abandoned but is supported by his/her classmates. I tell my students that they are like a group of mountain climbers tackling Mount Everest. They are tied together to ensure their individual safety. Nobody will fall off the mountain unless they all fall but likewise nobody will make it to the summit unless they all make an individual effort to achieve the team’s goal. In cooperative learning environments, participants are evaluated according to effort in relation to ability. Each student must move up the mountain of learning but not everybody has to reach the top. To employ learner autonomy is, however, full of challenges for the individual teacher. It is hard work. The teacher no longer teaches one class but 20 plus individuals. In addition, the teacher is often met by huge skepticism especially from parents. I, like Ushioda and Dörnyei, believe though that socially constructed, intrinsic motivation is best achieved in the autonomous classroom. And I believe that if you want your class to reach the summit of the mountain then you must listen to them, allow them to choose and define their learning and allow them to work together. References Practical tips for helping learners take control – Paul Bress
Focus on accuracyMany teachers, even today, jump in with the correct English when students make an error. Instead, it’s far preferable to encourage self- and peer-correction. If students can do something by themselves, they’ll learn more effectively, and it’s a crime to intervene, as students will feel robbed of a learning opportunity. Reading skillsUsually teachers give students a reading task to do while reading a text. This is fine, but it’s possible to get your students to do more of the work. Instead of making the task yourself, you can hand out the text and ask students to make notes on the main points. Take back the original text then ask the students to get together in pairs and write, say, five questions which test the understanding of the main points. Pairs swap questions, answer them, and return them. At this pointyou could intervene by asking your own questions and, if they are significantly different from the students’, elicit how and why. Review workMost students appreciate the need for review work but might lose interest if it’s always done by the teacher (and always in the same manner). To increase both motivation and autonomy, you can ask students to replace you as the questioner. You can even set up a ‘review circle’:
After each student has conducted a review session, it’s the turn of the first student again, and so on. In my experience, such review sessions, with their feel of a quiz or game show, can be the highlight of a course! To conclude, teachers will always need to be able to engage ‘high profile’ types of teaching (in which, for example, models and explanations are given), but students today will want to experience hands-on practice from the start. Without this change in emphasis, students will remain far too dependent on their teacher and won’t make the progress they could. Paul Bress Try these other teaching tips by Paul Bress on Teachitworld:
Encouraging reflection – Anja Burkert
Reflection and learner diariesThus, I decided to start out cautiously and to first focus on the metacognitive dimension of learner autonomy, reflection, using ideas from Leni Dam’s 1995 book on learner autonomy. I asked two students in each class to draw up a reflection on the previous class and to present their reflections at the beginning of the next class. Today, each student in each of my classes is keeping a learner diary in which they continually reflect on work done in the previous class and share their reflections at the beginning of the next class with their neighbour. I set them the questions below to focus on. These can obviously be adapted to your own teaching context.
My first experiences with the end-of-class reflections were not entirely positive. While my first semester students quite eagerly accepted the idea, students in their second semester, who were well aware that these reflections were not part of the basic course requirements and were therefore not asked for in other courses, were more reluctant to carry out this additional task. Moreover, as I as a teacher did not yet have any experience with these reflections, I was not totally successful in convincing my students of their benefits. Although still today the learner diary is not a basic course requirement, I feel much more confident about asking my students to keep it as I have in the meantime become entirely convinced of its multiple benefits. Group work and peer-reviewingI found that seating the students in groups, an arrangement which may be quite different from what they are used to, was of vital importance in order to foster collaboration. It is an extremely enriching experience for the teacher to see their students actively engaging in exercises and activities and discussing among themselves upcoming questions and possible answers. The peer-reviewing sessions of home assignments which I also introduced into my teaching have become very popular with my students. They appreciate finding out how their peers have approached a writing task and are able to give them positive feedback on how to improve their texts. All in all, I can only say that putting aspects of the concept of learner autonomy into practice in my teaching has made teaching and learning a much more enjoyable and worthwhile experience for me and my students. References Dam, L. (1995). Learner Autonomy 3: From Theory to Classroom Practice. Dublin: Authentik. Learner autonomy and testing – Judith Mader
What exactly do we mean?Firstly, what do we mean by ‘autonomous’? Learners who have total freedom over whether, what, when and how they learn are probably few and far between. What we generally mean are learners operating within a given context, like a school, but who can be encouraged to take learning into their own hands and set, if not ultimate goals, then at least intermediate ones. Secondly, what do we mean by ‘testing’? Tests are usually undertaken to find out whether learners have reached a certain stage in language learning and are often perceived as negative by both teachers and learners; tests are usually taken to be passed or failed; tests are given as punishments or because teachers can’t think of anything better to do in a lesson. Testing vs. assessmentHowever, the broader term of ‘assessment’ includes learners’ ability to evaluate their own progress, which is essential for learner autonomy. If teachers and learners are encouraged to see tests in this context, then they can act as a useful tool for autonomous learners. It can help if we consider the following points:
Getting testing rightJust as learners can only become autonomous if they are provided with the right material and encouragement, so can tests only be useful if they are properly set, administered and marked. How each of these is done depends on the type of test and how professionally the test-setter approaches the task. Testing is a professional task just as teaching is, and although there are interfaces between the two, they are not the same thing. Teachers who want to use testing and assessment to encourage autonomous learning should first examine some of the prevalent misconceptions about testing and approach it as a tool which can be beneficial to both themselves and their autonomous learners. References Try these other teaching tips by Judith Mader on Teachitworld:
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Ideal self-access activitiesMany of Teachitworld's whizzy things are ideal for self-access learning: fun, interactive games to accompany the Teachitworld resources your students have done in class. Snap: A high-speed challenge for students to play alone against the computer or in pairs. Please note that Teachitworld's whizzy things are for members only. Find out more about whizzy things. Find out more about membership. With Teachitworld membership, you can also set your students some of Teachitworld's audio recordings to listen to. Become a Teachitworld contributorSend us your top resources and your teaching tools and tips
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We, as teachers, are often charged with the responsibility of motivating our students. Motivation, though, is something that comes from the individual and, just like learning, cannot be given. We can and should, however, nurture an environment which is conducive to motivation.
Whether we like it or not, we’re living in a world where we’re expected to operate more and more autonomously. In the UK, we no longer get served at the petrol pump; business people type their own letters and emails; supermarkets have introduced self-service tills … The ELT classroom should follow such developments in the ‘real world’ rather than serving learners knowledge on a plate. But what can teachers actually do to facilitate learner autonomy?
As a teacher of English at university level, I discovered the concept of learner autonomy only a few years ago when working on my PhD. I was immediately intrigued by the idea of transferring more responsibility to the learners and negotiating with them learning goals and ways to achieve them. At the same time, it was clear that in my particular teaching and learning context it would not be possible to translate into practice all aspects of the concept. I meet my students only around 12 times a semester (exams excluded) for 90 minutes and they do only one or two semester courses with me. This is obviously a very different matter than accompanying a class of secondary school pupils from their first year of English up to their final school leaving examinations.
At first glance, the title seems to be a contradiction in terms. Surely autonomous learners are happy to learn at their own pace without interference from exam boards and test-mad teachers? As someone fully convinced of the usefulness of tests, I would like to suggest that proper use of testing can facilitate and encourage autonomous learning.
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