I’ve decided to use my blog as a reflective tool while doing my dissertation project – the final component of my M.A. in ELT –  hypothesising that this will make it an even more effective learning experience for me, by mapping it, enabling me to look back on my thought processes and decisions and see what effect these have on the project development. (Other posts in this series can be found here) Once I get to the end (13th September is D-Day!), as well as looking back over the experience of doing the project, I plan to try and evaluate the effect of these reflective blog posts on it.

Delta module 1 exam is over, all semester 2 assignments are in: time to focus on this dissertation now. My next meeting with H is on Wednesday (assuming I’m ready), so I’m in the process of responding to everything that was raised for consideration in the first meeting. As well as getting my head around all those questions that emerged, I need to prepare a possible framework for my materials. So, here goes…

So far, since my last dissertation meeting, I’ve read (in order):

Nault, D. (2006) Going Global: Rethinking Culture Teaching in ELT Contexts  in Language, Culture and Curriculum vol. 19/3.

Ellis, R. (2009) Task-based language teaching: sorting out the misunderstandings in International Journal of Applied Linguistics vol 19/3. Blackwell Publishing.

Svalberg, A. (2007) Language awareness and language learning in Language Teaching vol. 40/4. (Abstract: http://journals.cambridge.org/abstract_S0261444807004491) Cambridge Journals.

Bolitho et al. (2003) Ten questions about language awareness in ELTJ vol. 57/3. Oxford University Press.

Next on my list to read: 

Van den Branden, Bygate and Norris ed. (2009) Task-Based Language Teaching: A reader John Benjamins Publishing Company.

Ellis, R. (2003) Task-based Language Learning and Teaching Oxford University Press.

My context:

Private language school in Leeds

Upper intermediate learners

Multilingual classes

Continuous enrolment (students arriving and leaving regularly, some stay for a number of months, others as little as a week or two)

Big mixture of learning goals (some want to study in the U.K., some want to improve their English because it will help in their job back home, some are on holiday and want to improve their English at the same time, for some it’s a hobby).

They study General English in the morning and in the afternoon the sessions are more skills-focused and for those that want it there is the possibility of joining an IELTS preparation class or having one to one tuition.

Students can also use the self-access room, which has a suite of computers, some graded readers and other resources. This is supervised on a daily basis by different members of staff, for 2hrs on a Monday and an hr Tuesday to Thursday, who are on hand to help the students find something suited to their needs/wants.

The majority of the students particularly want to improve their speaking and listening, but there are some whose speaking/listening are already pretty good and whose writing lets them down. These tend to be the students who want to study in the U.K. and choose the IELTS afternoon classes. Students also tend to have learnt English at school in their home countries, usually with a heavy grammar focus.

I want to make materials for the morning classes, so systems and skills needs to be integrated and content suited to General English learners.

The teachers at this school are all pretty experienced and used to preparing weekly schemes of work based on the course books in use. There are also regular CPD sessions. They do, however, make good use of teachers books in their planning – whether or not they then elect to adhere to what the teachers book says. So, a good set of teachers notes to accompany my materials will be a must. Ideally, these notes will have a lot of flexibility built in, rather than being didactic.

Theory:

Having (re)read the articles listed above, I think a well-designed set of TBLL materials, using elements of the Language Awareness approach would work well for this context:

• Although usually associated with speaking tasks, Ellis (2009) points out that tasks can be input-based too. Apparently in a book of his, he has a chapter on the use of listening tasks in TBL – I will be reading that! I believe it should therefore be possible to design materials, using this approach, that ensure focus on all 4 skills, as well as grammar/vocabulary/pronunciation – Ellis (2009) explains that focus on form is not limited to grammatical form and cites studies that show focus on vocabulary and pronunciation. So it’s possible, the challenge will be designing materials that promote and enable this.
• Tasks can be focused or unfocused. A task-based syllabus can be purely focused, purely unfocused, or a mixture. I would go for a mixture, as I can see benefits for both task types.
• Language Awareness can be deductive or inductive, but inductive is most common. According to Borg, cited in Svalberg (2007), there are five main features of an LA methodology:

1. It involves an ONGOING INVESTIGATION of language as a dynamic phenomenon rather than awareness of a fixed body of established facts.

2. It involves learners in TALKING ANALYTICALLY about language, often to each other.

3. It considers essential the INVOLVEMENT of learners in exploration and discovery.

4. It aims to develop not only the learners’ knowledge about and understanding of language but also their LEARNING SKILLS, thus promoting learner independence.

5. The aim is to involve learners on both a COGNITIVE and AFFECTIVE level.

(Svalberg, 2007:291, emphasis here as per the article)

• (Continuing from the above bullet point) As is mentioned in this article, there is a crossover here between LA and Ellis’s Consciousness-Raising approach to grammar, which he believes is compatible with his TBLT framework. I’m inclined to agree with Ellis on this one, I think his TBLT framework and elements of the LA approach could complement each other nicely. I would add a further metacognitive element, so that learners are helped to understand this non-traditional approach and not feel threatened by it.
• Combining the two approaches would enable a greater variety of learning styles to be catered for: LA is very analytical BUT, as cited above, aims to involve learners affectively too. Affective engagement could come, for example,  through use of engaging texts, to which learners respond, in input-based tasks as well as through use of input or output-based tasks which draw on learners’ experiences and backgrounds.
• Using tasks which generate written output would enable learners who are keen to improve their writing the chance to do this, while those learners who are most interested in speaking would still benefit from the task process, which would involve collaboration and therefore the opportunity to speak. Speaking skill development, meanwhile, could come through form focus in speaking tasks, by focusing on features of spoken discourse. In keeping with the LA approach, awareness of how and why these features are used, and to what effect, would need to be incorporated.

Other features that my materials will include:

Development of intercultural awareness

This, I believe, would be helpful for learners, whether they stay long term in the (multicultural) UK, e.g. to study, or whether they return to their own countries and use English as a language of wider communication. Nault (2006:323) recommends that more attention be focused on “issues such as cultural misunderstandings, cross-cultural pragmatics, stereotypes, non-verbal communication and culture shock”. Of course, the question is quite how to go about this. I think one immediate resource would be the diversity of learner backgrounds within classes in my context. Another interesting resource would be recordings of learners’ own interactions with each other during tasks. These could be compiled into a corpus and learners could look for patterns. (This needs further thought with regards to how it would work on a practical level!)

Use of the English-Speaking Environment

This is a valuable resource for these learners, so it would be beneficial for materials to exploit it. I think this would work well as a project thread. So it could be that tasks prepare learners to undertake the project, then scaffold them through the process of undertaking it, after which it could be used as a basis for further tasks. Then the cycle would begin anew. For this element, I am also considering use of a wiki. The non-linguistic goal of the wiki would be to create a resource for incoming learners to access, which would help them better understand and negotiate the ESE of Leeds. In terms of dealing with the constant flow of new learners, new learners would join existing groups (as these lost members) and existing group members would then explain what they have been doing and what they intend to do. New learners would also access the resource, once established, and begin to participate, helped by their group.

The school/context has a social programme, which learners can take part in. This would be a resource that could be tapped in the course of these projects. Additionally, learners stay in residences with other non-native speakers or in host families. This, too, could be exploited by the materials. For example, activities could include surveys and interviews about what people do for fun in Leeds or the types of films they like and why. Learners are keen to interact with people in their environment, so giving them a purpose and scaffolding the process through use of pre-, during- and post-project tasks would be helpful for them and may also motivate and help those who are keen but uncertain about how to go about it or perhaps shy. The collaborative element would provide additional support.

Information gathered, e.g. what people do for fun in Leeds, could be compared with learners’ own countries/cultures, but also in terms of different-subcultures, such as different ages, different social backgrounds etc. A task could be used to scaffold this process, the outcome of which could also go on the wiki. Thus, as well as information about Leeds and the people who live in it, either temporarily or permanently, there would also be information about how this compares with other countries in the world. Newcomers to the class could add their perspective to such tasks at any time, if their country wasn’t represented in a particular task, or they wanted to add to the representation of their country, as well as participating in whatever the current project was.

This will be where the “originality” of my materials comes in: Because they are designed specifically for the E.S.E. rather than as a global course book, they will scaffold the use of this environment as a learning tool. (In fact, Tomlinson, 2008, complains that “none of the books [that he reviewed for this volume] seem to really help learners to make use of the English which is in the out of school environment everywhere”.)

Use of multimedia

As well as the wiki/project element, it would be useful to scaffold learners’ use of the self-access centre computer suite, to enable them to benefit more fully from this resource. In order to do that, tasks could be used which require grouped learners to use the suite initially during class time and then outside of class time, with subsequent in-class discussion/reporting/presenting/reflecting/evaluating based on this.

And now it’s time for me to go away, get more books out of the library and work on a unit framework and an organisational framework within which units will sit. For it to be task-based, the task needs to be the unit of organisation, but also to consider is the task-as-plan vs task-as-process, sequencing of tasks to maximise their yield for learners, and how this will fit together with the ESE project and intercultural awareness threads…

References:

Ellis, R. (2009) Task-based language teaching: sorting out the misunderstandings in International Journal of Applied Linguistics vol 19/3. Blackwell Publishing.

Nault, D. (2006) Going Global: Rethinking Culture Teaching in ELT Contexts  in Language, Culture and Curriculum vol. 19/3.

Svalberg, A. (2007) Language awareness and language learning in Language Teaching vol. 40/4. (Abstract: http://journals.cambridge.org/abstract_S0261444807004491) Cambridge Journals.

Tomlinson B. and Masuhara H (2008)  Materials used in the U.K. in Tomlinson, B. (ed.) English Language Learning Materials: a critical review. Continuum. London.

Hopefully progress is being made…  However, I would be interested to hear anybody’s thoughts on what I have explored in this post – be as critical as you like! 🙂