materials development

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Bringing Metacognition into the Classroom

Towards the end of the 9p.m. #ELTchat discussion on Twitter yesterday, @Sandymillin asked for ideas of how to develop skills, rather than just practicing them, at intermediate level – as a means of helping learners get off the intermediate plateau. I piped up with the suggestion of using metacognition. Sandy recommended that I blog about what I meant by this, so here it is…

I’ve spent the past 8 weeks or so developing a set of materials for the assessment (finally submitted on Monday!) of the materials development module on my M.A. in ELT at Leeds Met, and one of the threads of this set was the development of metacognition. As such, it’s been uppermost in my mind for some time now! As far as developing listening skills goes, I would highly recommend reading Vandergrift and Goh (2012): Teaching and learning Second Language Listening, which lays out the theory behind the development of metacognitive awareness, a pedagogical framework for bringing it into the classroom and example activities which demonstrate the practical application of it all. Very inspiring. I do believe, however, that this approach can be useful not only for listening but for development in all four language skills and that if our materials do not reflect this (my assessment materials did attempt to!), then we, as teachers, can compensate for this in how we use these materials in the classroom.

The idea behind developing metacognitive awareness in listening is that if learners are more self-aware, task-aware and strategy-aware, they will be able to help themselves listen better when the teacher is not there to do this for them. Many course materials provide listening practice – you have your readiness activities, your listening text, various activities based on the text, form focus etc, and if you’re lucky, then you’re using a coursebook that does this effectively or you’re free to pick and choose the materials you use, in which case you sequence your choice of materials and activities in the manner you believe to be most conducive to learning. However, what about the learners in all this? They dutifully do the activities, and we, as teachers, often assume our purpose of using them is crystal clear. The reality, though, is that if you ask them why they think you have requested that they do a particular activity or sequence of activities, they will probably reply (as did the group of IELTS learners I put this question to yesterday during a class I covered, in the context of a vocabulary activity) with a mixture of blank expressions or “to help us improve our English, teacher” –type responses combined with a quizzical look that appears to wonder why such a clearly obvious thing would be questioned. If you think about it, learners are not generally encouraged to question materials. Some materials, promoting critical thinking, encourage questioning of the texts therein – for example in terms of writer’s purpose, choice of language and how it affects the reader/listener and so on – but very rarely are they required to question the activities themselves or the approach behind these. Materials are usually the authority, they know best.

I think this is a pity because a lot of time and effort goes into developing learning materials and they strive to combine activities that will promote most effective language learning, and we as teachers put a lot of time and effort into deciding how we can exploit them most usefully. We try to include a varied diet of activities, so as to meet as wide a variety of learner preferences and needs as we can. We know that any given activity will be more useful to some learners than others and vice versa. Different learners are engaged by, enjoy, struggle with, find useful, are challenged by and are bored by very different activities. There is a lot that learners could learn from all this. Perhaps, then, as well as attempting to meet all these different needs and styles within a lesson, we can go a step further: We can encourage learners to think about why they are doing/have done a particular activity, what they have got out of doing it, why they found it useful/challenging/boring/difficult. It could be that if they are convinced enough by the purpose, then they will try harder next time to overcome the negative response they felt towards it this time round, perhaps developing a style of working that isn’t their first choice but may benefit them in the long run. As their understanding of the different activities found in their materials increases, they may be better able to apply the principles behind these to their encounters with language outside of the classroom. Taking this a step further, we could encourage learners to collaborate and create their own activities, based on authentic materials (“the language produced by a real speaker/writer for a real audience, conveying a real message” – Gilmore, 2007. Note there is no mention of the native speaker here, so this can apply to texts produced by any user of English) of their choice, for use by their colleagues. (For any who may be interested, creation of own materials for learning comes under level 4 out of 5 of Nunan’s (1997) levels of implementation [I’m glad I noticed that Word auto-changed implementation – presumably with a typo – to implantation! That could have sounded a bit dodgy!] of autonomy and level five is the highest level, where the learners connect their learning with their language use in the real world). This would, of course require some guidance. Vandergrift and Goh (2012) provide a useful example task scaffolding this process of learner production of materials for use with listening texts.

Ok, now that I’ve bored you with my rationale, if you’ve got this far I will reward you with a few practical ideas for use in the classroom:

  • Start building critical reflection into your lessons gradually. So for example, you could start by using a Demand High technique, mentioned by Jim Scrivener in his Classroom Management Techniques book: At the end of the lesson, instead of just bringing the final activity to a close and sending your learners off home, ask them what three things they found most useful in that lesson and, all-importantly, why. Give them time to discuss in pairs and/or groups. Encourage them to appreciate everybody else’s responses and reasoning, which will no doubt be influenced by previous learning experiences and current learning habits.
  • Start encouraging learners to think about the purposes behind the activities you are using, to question their utility. It’s ok for them to think an activity is useless – as long as they can justify it! However, it would be useful to encourage them to think about how it could be useful. Or how it could be adapted to become more useful to them. (If you then in a future lesson, when you have a similar activity planned, allow them to adapt it, then you will be letting them operate on level 3 of Nunan’s levels of implementation of autonomy)
  • Subvert your course book (they tend to follow a predictable pattern so breaking it can spice things up). Or your usual approach to sequencing activities. Skip an activity/a stage that you would usually use to help the learners. (But be nice about it – explain that today you are going to do things a bit differently before launching into a different game plan: get them on board and ready to spot the differences!) Build in time for discussion following your atypical choice of activities/sequencing and get learners to think in what ways the lesson was different, and what impact this had on how easy/difficult they found the (reading text/listening text/speaking task/writing activity etc.). In this way, learners will become more aware of the value of different activities for them, in approaching texts or tasks.
  • Use a listening text as a basis for a text reconstruction activity, then encourage learners to compare their reconstruction with the transcript. Give learners a list of potential difficulties they might have had understanding the text. Have them circle words/phrases in the transcript that they had difficulty with and identify what it was that caused them difficulty. This helps raise their awareness of what they struggle with, enabling them to target these elements in any out of class listening work they do. You could also target difficulties that are common to the majority of learners, for example doing some receptive pronunciation work to overcome difficulties in handling the elisions/assimilations etc. associated with connected speech. (This idea, I must attribute to Vandergrift and Goh, 2012!)
  • At the end of a course book unit, build in a reflection and evaluation phase, where learners look back over the unit and identify what they have learnt, what activities they found most useful and why.
  • At the beginning of a course book section, get the learners to look at the sequence of activities and interrogate the choice/sequencing of activities, to consider whether adding an activity in anywhere, or omitting/substituting an activity might help them.
  • Get learners to work in groups, give each group a reading text and have them create an activity, or sequence of activities, based on this for use by one of the other groups. They will, of course, find this easier if they have a better understanding of the activities used with texts in their course book or provided by you.

As with anything, don’t try and do it all at once – the learners might think you’ve completely lost the plot and run away. Do it gradually, bit by bit. Experiment. Make sure the learners understand why you are asking them to do things they may not be accustomed to doing – like thinking for themselves and critiquing their learning materials/teacher’s activity choices. Don’t over-do it, anything over-done goes stale! Finally, be supportive and open to feedback from them, so that you can also learn from the process.

And let me know how it goes! 🙂

References:

Gilmore, A. (2007) Authentic materials and authenticity in foreign language learning. In Language Teaching vol. 40. Cambridge University Press. Cambridge.

Nunan, D. (1997) Designing and Adapting Materials to encourage Learner Autonomy in Autonomy and Independence in Language Learning. Benson and Voller (ed). Pearson Education. Harlow.

Scrivener, J. (2012) Classroom Management Techniques. Cambridge University Press. Cambridge.

Vandergrift L. and Goh, C (2012) Teaching and Learning Second Language Listening. Routledge. Oxon.

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Part 2 – Coming to the end of my M.A. in ELT: Taking stock.

This is part 2 of my reflections about my experience of doing the M.A. in ELT at Leeds Metropolitan University. Part 1 deals with the Delta component of the course, and came about as a guest blog for Sandy Millin. You can read it on her blog, along with all the other respondents’ posts. Coming to the end of my M.A. in ELT: Taking stock. Classes are all but over, The assignments all but in, Time to say goodbye now But what a year it’s been! It’s been nearly a year since I applied to do my M.A. in ELT at Leeds Met. I distinctly remember getting to the end of the interview and being offered a place on the course – and then once the euphoria wore off using the next month to read everything ELT-related that I could get my hands on in preparation. But in between, I had to officially accept the offer, through an electronic system, and before I made that step of committing to giving up a year of my life and a fair old sum of money, I was intensely anxious. I hadn’t even heard of Leeds Met until I found the leaflet for the course in my conference pack at IATEFL 2012! What if it was totally shoddy? I was somewhat reassured by the universality of the Delta qualification element and also by the years of experience I discovered the tutors had when I nosed around the official Leeds Met site and located the profiles which mentioned the Delta and the M.A, and so it was I accepted my offer. And, without a doubt, professionally it’s been one of the best things I ever did. Coming to the end, and having had such a great experience on the course, I decided I wanted to write about it for my blog, so that anybody either in a similar position to the one I was in – about to accept and wanting reassurance that the decision wasn’t going to be a huge mistake – or in the position of choosing between various professional development options, could read it and use the information to help the decision-making process along. There are two main routes that exist for the M.A. in ELT: The first one, which I did, integrates the Delta into it, while the second one doesn’t. There are also part-time and full-time options – I did the full-time one – and an online version. My focus will, of course be my route, full-time M.A. in ELT with integrated Delta. In order to try and minimize the rambling, I will borrow from the set of questions used in Sandy’s Delta Conversations idea, and which I answered for the Delta component of this course. So here it is, my experience of the M.A. in ELT at Leeds Met: 1. Why did you choose this M.A.?  Mostly because of the integrated Delta. I was very keen to upgrade my CELTA and generally make myself more employable. Doing the M.A. at the same time seemed like an added bonus! 2. What do you think you gained from doing this M.A.?  What didn’t I gain?! To try and be more specific, then:

  •  The opportunity to develop a range of skills that I will be able to apply beyond the end of the course. So, for example, materials development, multimedia tool development, course development (this came through the Delta Module 3 element but the M.A. assessment, which reflected the Delta assignment, helped me process the whole thing in greater depth), how to do research, how to write a journal article, how to give good oral presentations. I had experience of none of these prior to the course, except for materials development and my experience of that was fairly minimal. So it was a steep learning curve, but coming out the other end, a lot doors have opened up to me. For example, I am going to be presenting at two conferences over the summer. At the first (The Warwick Applied Linguistics Conference in June) I will be presenting the research I did for the research module and at the second (the MATSDA conference in July), I will be presenting a sample of the work that I and my colleagues produced for the materials development module and discussing it in relation to the conference theme. Further into the future, I look forward to doing more research, developing more materials, writing journal articles for publication, being involved in course design, presenting at more conferences, and so on. I feel that a lot of doors have opened up to me through doing the course.
  • A great deal more self-confidence than I had before, through discovering my “voice”.  When I started the course, it quickly became apparent, in initial drafts of Delta Module 2 LSA1 and my Delta module 3 essay introduction, that this was something I lacked. This relates to the development of critical thinking skills, which is a very strong feature of this course, and the opportunity and guidance in this area of development contributed to the emergence of my “voice”.
  • Awareness of the limitations of what I know as well as the ability to question everything and look for answers, both in the literature and through primary research of my own.

 3. What were the benefits of doing an M.A. in ELT at Leeds Met?  Well, having the opportunity to gain everything that I gained, as described above, for a start! In addition:

  • A distinct benefit of doing this course is learning from the fantastic team of tutors who deliver it. They are all very experienced in their specialist areas and enthusiastic about sharing that experience and knowledge with the cohort. I have also found them all very supportive and helpful in every way.
  • The group was nice and small, but not too small, and very diverse. This meant that as well as being close-knit and supportive, there were enough differing opinions to make for a wealth of stimulating discussion in class.
  • Related to the above point, all the opportunity for discussion built in to all of the modules, so that as well as benefitting from the tutors’ knowledge, we also gained from the range of different experiences that we, the cohort, have had between us.
  • The assessment strategy is brilliant. Each assessment type is very practical and you learn through doing it rather than simply being assessed. Of course, what you learn is also directly applicable beyond the end of the course.
  • The opportunity to try everything out (by “everything”, I mean all the skills described in my answer to question 2 above) and be helped to learn how to do it all properly, in a supportive, scaffolded environment, and so being prepared to go off and do it all independently and hopefully develop my career.

4. What were the drawbacks of doing an M.A. in ELT at Leeds Met?  There weren’t any! I’ve loved every minute of it. 5. What tips would you give other people who plan to do an M.A. (possibly at Leeds Met!)?

  1. The only limiting factor to what you can get out of the experience is what you put in. The more you put in, the more you get out.
  2. Be prepared to work and work and work and work…you get the point. It’s an all-consuming experience but that does make it incredibly rewarding too.
  3. Don’t be afraid to ask for help when you need it. The support is there. (I would hope this would be the same at other universities but of course I can only speak for the one I attended!)
  4. Read as much as you can before you start the course, especially if you are doing the integrated Delta: There aren’t enough hours in two semesters to start from scratch and read enough to maximize on the experience. Once you start doing the course, read cleverly: Make notes of where you’ve read stuff, target your reading carefully etc.
  5. Get drafts done in advance of assignment tutorials – you can benefit much more fully from these if the tutors have seen something beforehand.
  6.  Enjoy it!! It’s an amazing experience and it comes to an end all too quickly.

Well, this post is far too long already so I shall bring it to a close now. If you have any questions about the course, contact Heather Buchanan (course leader) on h.buchanan@leedsbeckett.ac.uk; if you have any specific questions you want to ask me about my experience of the course, that aren’t answered above, feel free to get in touch – lizzie.pinard@gmail.com. Disclaimer: This blog post consists of my experience, my views and claims to be no more and no less!

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Materials Development – What is it that makes learning materials better than good?

This subject is uppermost on my mind at the moment, as the final lesson of my materials development module will be this Friday. Next Friday, we will be doing “Dragon’s Den” presentations, where we have to speak persuasively for 12 minutes justifying and “selling” the materials we have been designing for the module assessment. Hopefully our materials will be principled, workable, suited to the chosen context and we will show evidence of the application of theory to practice – with a splash of creativity thrown in!

The materials I designed are aimed at upper intermediate students studying at private language schools in the U.K. It’s been an interesting and rewarding experience developing them from random sparks of ideas into a coherent 6-8 hour unit. I do like the idea of the module assessment being something which is not only practical and will be useful in the long run but also generates learning rather than simply testing it. The group has had 3hrs a week of input for the module this semester, in which we’ve systematically worked through different aspects of materials design from picking out theories of language, learning, acquisition and teaching,  principles in existing materials and identifying what theories and principles we believe in, to evaluating and adapting materials for a particular context, and looking at things like visual impact, clarity of instructions, how to integrate effective systems and skills development into materials, as well as issues such as how to develop intercultural competence. I expect I’ve probably left something out, but I’m sure you get the general idea.

Anyway, my question for anybody out there who happens to find this page is this:

What, in your opinion, separates the wheat from the chaff as far as materials are concerned?

What principles/theories etc influence your materials writing or teaching the most? 

And finally, How important do you think enjoyment is to language learning and why?

I shall post my presentation/powerpoint on here after I’ve delivered it, which will provide a good idea of my own views, but meanwhile what about all of yours? I’d be very interested to hear.

Feel free to answer as few or as many of the questions as you like – any and all responses are welcome!