Adventures in CI, atomic fission was the key



Think of the above as a S<>S interaction, with the neutrons, the TL.

I had just finished my 4th grade classes, and I tried out my new interaction patterns on the class.

These were essentially changing a weakly dialogic class to something that was more student to student. Drawing on my knowledge of chemistry, I played the role of catalyst. Initiating the reaction but remained unchanged by it throughout. The task in this case was simply asking and answering a question, this going down the line of desks to the end. I had initially envisaged mad scientist style, one row of students asking the target language (how’s the weather?) with the row behind them giving them an open answer (It’s sunny) but it was hijacked by my KET, she made it by column, not row. It still worked either way. Not a bad start, but the experimentation continues. The students in pairs again, ask about the target language, as seen in the short film seen in class. Again, I initiated it, but had no part in the saying of the target language, all the input was from the video.

What was the yield? Most of the students spoke, a few did not. Those that didn’t felt it too embarrassing, but obviously their affective filter. Clearly something is needed to penetrate their ‘lead sheilding’. But the net effect was it was initiated by me, but the speaking was done on the whole, by the students. An experiment in sound if you will.

You say it, I'll just hum it.

Connectionism, but in the last place I thought I'd have it done. The 4th grade KET I co-teach with is rather strict on the kids, and perhaps methodologies too. Up to this week it was an unfair evaluation. One of the new CI's I'd devised, worked, in one of the classes I least expected it too. Have the students, or in this case, student say the target language. She, the student did lead off, and the rest of the class followed, repeating her iterations of the TL. I bounced this around the room, asking willing students in turn to say the TL, which was said by the rest of the class.

Aside from some prompting of the TL on my part, not a word was said by me. KET happy, Me, very happy. Class, well, how does a 4th grader feel? I tried the same "you say it, they'll repeat it" CI in the next class. No dice. Maybe it was how I approached it, but none of them wanted any of it. A mixed response with a 50% success rate. Not bad.

O, I CI

Just a short post of my personal goals for the week. I just finished typing up a second transcript, and I must say it was enlightening to see the 'data'. As far as MIC, making input clear, I have not. There's huge gaps in my practical teaching that theoretical knowledge needs to be put into practice. I did try to have the students repeat my instructions as a form of CCQs, but maybe I will try again.

This aside, it's a little like poking your finger into a weakened retaining wall of a dyke with the sea lapping on the other side. I need to write this paper to throw some light on the subject. As for the retaining wall, concrete and mortar, so to speak.

Shooting to thrill

A time for change, how to change?

My question is what is the question(s) I have to ask myself. What's the problem and how do I rectify it? I do have some gnawing problems that do need addressing (see the previous entry). I'm rather bad at self-reflection, but I'm trying to change this. Action research is the start, and in doing so, I need to collect data on myself. Or should I say, on my teaching. But, it can be very much one in the same, teaching can be a very personal thing. Video being very good, I think is the long way of doing it. I tend to think that keeping a diary on my teaching, would be a start. I already know in class whether or not a task has worked or not, but for me, it's the instruction giving!

As for changing the student CIs, that's a work in progress. Slow work, for results in the long term. My KET has been great for that. Not so much the what, but the how...

Can’t see the top for lookin’

I have always sought to have my students tell me things. Elicitation and Tt >> SS, SS<< Tt interaction patterns but, I’m even trying to change this so that the students ask the students, and all they need is the primer question from me, and off it goes.  I think it’s all in the setup. Normally I will ask questions but it’ll only be the bright sparks in the class that volunteer answers. No problem, except that there are other students in the class, simply sitting idle, along for the ride and are letting it pass.

At this stage the affective filter can be brought into play here.  According to the text, the affective filter (a barrier or impedance to learning) is raised by stress, embarrassment, or… boredom. That was a new one to me but that makes sense. Bored students wig out and start doodling on the desks. I positively hate the term ‘edutainer’ (by using it you’ve just relegated my status from teacher to troused English monkey). Having said that, I have actually danced for my fifth grade class, in return that they sing the lyrics. It partially worked, and turned out to be a minor hit with that fifth grade class singing parts of the song to me outside of class. Fun for them, they remembered it, if only the application was a bit off. Thank goodness that the computer and it’s CD didn’t break that many times.

The whole English department knows that I’m doing the STG TESOL, and in some cases have been interviewees for my homework videos. The whole of this week I’ve been discussing with my KET interaction patterns, and he has been quite encouraging and permissive to let me loose on the students, much like a mad scientist has a zeal for his experiments.  I must say that some of the changes in interaction patterns have actually worked.

Think of it as nuclear fission on a classroom scale. One becomes two, two  becomes four and so on. I’ve started a question with three students, and they’ve asked the person the question.  The next step is to have them ask and answer questions down the whole row. Set in a game context, it goes down like gang busters. The motivation is intrinsic, the affective filter is lowered, though I did observe one or two students simply struggling with the language itself. Once the flag drops on the race, it’s all go-go!

The other thing I’ve been trying to apply is instruction giving. Pick up your pencil, open your book to page ninety-eight. It’s too long, chunk it. One instruction at a time. There’s nothing quick about ESL, and you have to take things slowly, one instruction at a time. The other facet of this part of a lesson is finding the language to communicate it. Given that some students have a limited vocabulary and even some more students have a limited attention span for English, the instructions should be informative.

I know that repetition is one of the techniques touted, but I’ve yet to have the students paraphrase it in English. I need to read more into this. 

Answers to Methodology week 4

Methodology Week 4. Johnston Chapter 2

Question 3.

When I taught adults, I’d come frequently come across attitudes that were different to mine. I had the student explain his reasoning. Normally it’s a cultural context that makes them have that view. As a foreigner in their culture I accepted it but also explained what would have happened in the country I came from. If I didn’t know (or remember) the student’s mother culture then I would ask why. If I did know then I would understand better and explain to the class why he made that statement. Jackie could have had the student explain why. Possibly to the her and if it wasn’t too embarrassing to the class, who obviously found it an abnormal response.

With reference to Mary’s experience with a Korean learner, yes I have. In the past I’ve done a visual survey of who is able to answer the question, and who is not able to, for whatever reason. If the same situation happened, I normally would take the example of ducking her head and reading the textbook as avoidant behavior. Avoiding and ignoring the question, which I would have considered extremely rude. If it’s a conversation class, why don’t they try? But I know now that the affective filter and other facts have raised the students stress levels to a point where they cannot/ or will not answer properly. I know now as a teacher to distinguish between avoidant behavior and just plain larking around.

Question 5

The textbook I’m using is the current textbook that all Elementary schools use. It mirrors the current curriculum laid out by the Korean board of Education. The level of student participation it expects, provided that you use the book as is, is minimal. Given that way a teacher could you it and get from the students, rote memorization, with a little bit variation. As for the moral messages encoded within, it presents learning in a rather fun, ‘can’t be taken seriously’ way. As far as writing practice goes it presents little chance for writing and no chance for the student to write in an unstructured way. It presents typical American stereotypes with in my opinion horrible pronunciation. The functions presented are of reasonable standard as found in any ESL book, but frequently the tasks presented in the book are over used (within the lesson) and are tired. Model conversations or dialogue supplied with the book are not pronounced in a way that is natural, and in fact are preferred that way by the editors.

An evaluation of two classes

Reading, speaking and writing citing examples

Speaking

Background: I teach at an Elementary school. This school is academically aligned, with a majority of the students that have parents that work for Samsung electronics. I will refer to my fifth graders in this answer. Of the better classes, most of the students are able to produce formulaic speech. When asked on something that was outside of their body of knowledge, they were unable to answer. As far as being able to give an opinion on what was the better handset, a Samsung S3 or an iphone, the question was meet with silence and a nervous grin. On the ACTFL scaling I would rate these students at the novice level, though at an intermediate level. The less able students have a poor if non-existent vocabulary with incomplete utterances.

Writing

In the context of Elementary school, even the higher level students aren’t able to produce more than a few sentences from the textbook. I cite these students being at a high novice level. Grammatically, on the whole most sentences are influenced by their L1. "Can you come to birthday party" would be an example of the better sentences. In contrast, the lower level students cannot produce sentences, but are able to copy phrases and sentences from the textbook. Generally speaking, the higher level students handwriting is neat and well printed, while the lower level students have very poor execution of letters. In both cases, both groups of higher and lower level students would have poor or non-existence punctuation but with one or two exceptions. Punctuation marks like commas, and question marks would be missing.

Listening

Generally the higher level students are able to understand spoken, classroom instructions. Relating to the tasks of the functions of the lesson, for example, "do you want some more?" Most of the high level students will understand that question and answer accordingly, albeit, in the way the textbook has given it. Lower level learners will understand words such as ‘textbook’ or ‘classroom’ but not any long phrases. It is possible for a low level learner to understand but only after extensive elicitation. Lower level students may also understand basic questions from the textbook; "how old are you" for example.

Reading

Higher level students are placed at Novice, high level. They are fully able to understand what is written in the textbook. They are also able to understand short sentences relating to the textbook, and some shorter sentences that are not in the textbook, for example, and invitation. The lower level students on the other hand could be rated at Novice intermediate. Where, they are able to read some sentences from the textbook, albeit with some help in the form of pictures or explaination.

Wallpaper to wallpaper, talk, talk.

A short summary of articles by Xie, and Walsh

Xie’s article details a study of the state of Classroom interactions in China. While, Walsh deals more with teacher to student interactions and the negative and positive effects of teacher talk time or, TTT. The metering of teacher input, called by Walsh as being constructive and obstructive teaching. Whereas constructive was beneficial to student talk, productive in producing better sentences from students and in the long run, becoming more contemplative through the use of waiting time. Obstructive teaching was directed at the imbalance of TTT. Too much leads to students essentially switching off. Interrupt too many times or finish a students utterances and students will switch off. Why think and try hard when the teacher is going to do that for you?

Xie throughout her article refers back to the state of classrooms in ESL classrooms in China. She stated that the classrooms that were taught by native Chinese used dated methods, more akin to their subject teaching. The methodology of ESL teaching is greatly different to that of subject teaching. Better classroom interactions and the quality of classroom life are ways to better teacher to student and student to student dialogues.

I’m going to apply the interaction patterns to my classes. In thinking of the patterns, I do ask a lot of questions, both display and referential type questions. But what I would like to implement is student to student interactions. I have my own ruminations on this, but a general question to the readership out there, is, can you share any methods, tips or tricks with the rest of us?

Blackbox-it, then strip it

I haven’t even finished the Xie article and yet (I know, skim it, personalize and internalise) I feel compelled to give you guys some sort of report on my transcript. Yes. Yes. I do tend to say some fill words a lot. Yeah, so, okay. I’ve got to stop saying those. Is it possible to think silently and not seem unfriendly? Control, control! You must learn control to paraphrase the great teacher Yoda in instructing Luke on the planet of Dagoba.

Looking through the transcript it shows some features which, I’m happy to report, support some of the good features as noted by Xie. Elicitation, pauses (to allow student processing time), and perhaps lots of IRF, in the dialogic mode. After teaching ESl for this amount of time, I really don’t think I could ever teach in a monologic way. Gee, I hope that statement doesn’t come back and bite me in the ass.

As far as IRF goes, I’m tending towards dialogic. Granted that these kids are at their second year of ESL, their vocabularies are building. Elicit, elicit, elicit, half of time out infront of the class is elicitation. Weather, how do you feel? I’m not sure how long the IRF cycle goes, but these are fairly short. Question-response-feedback. 10 second segments totaling about… 8 minutes of elicitation of informing. That is, you tell me what you know, I do actually know the answer. But, looking at the transcript (at this stage it’s like a blackbox recorder on an airplane), I’m seeing other facets of CI that I couldn’t put a name to. Repetition/ choralling. Allowance of student processing time of the L2 (pausing), cueing. Feedback, has come as a minimal ‘yep’ or a ‘hmmm’. I think the hmm’s are getting condescending. Display questions I’ve used in setting of context of the video. And like someone who’s done CELTA I’ve made it sure that no task that the student does is not without purpose.

A short aside about CELTA. That course is intense, but side by side with TESOL, it’s black and white. CELTA is almost wholly practical, while TESOL is very much theory. At CELTA they absolutely strip you there, and after you leave the one month course you go in for counseling. TESOL… I’ll have to tell you later.

In reflecting on the mistakes and misdemeanors I’ve committed and there are a few. At one point I didn’t give my students enough time to process the input for an answer. Not ‘washing’ out an error, and just moving on.