In Part 1, I described the challenges Conversation teachers face when deciding which students should be promoted to the next level. Also, I had included descriptions of the skills that teachers should consider when determining which students at five different levels should demonstrate in order to pass.
In this Part 2, we will analyze three methods teachers can apply to a final conversation task using these criteria:
(This posting includes a handout which you are welcome to use with your students.)*
This posting is an updated version of a post from Feb. 2, 2017: Conversation class: Necessary ingredients for successful pair work (from research)
Early in my career, I became a big fan of two-way tasks in my lower- and intermediate-level Conversation classes.
After several terms of teaching those levels, I was assigned to teach an Advanced Discussion class for the first time. In keeping with the spirit of student-centered teaching, I (as the teacher) wanted to avoid being the one to lead the discussions, so I put students in groups with a list of questions to discuss. However, I soon realized that some students were sitting passively and others tended to monolog.
Then I had an epiphany. By applying the two-way task principle to discussions, I could assure that every student would be equally active.
Basically, each student in a group is given different information. For discussions, every group has a Student A, B and C (and sometimes D and E) and the discussion questions are divided among them. Just as in a two-way task activity, this requires every group member to be involved in asking the questions, in active listening and responding.
For sample activities of how a variation of the two-way-task format can be applied to discussion, see *ESL Discussions: Free Small-Group Discussion Units
(This posting includes a handout which you are welcome to use with your students.)
This posting is a more detailed response to my interview question on Day 2 .LINCS Discussion: Student-Centered Approach to Teaching Writing Skills. .
Below in blue, you’ll find the details that I’ve added to the Day 2 LINCS’ posting.
According to psychologist Edward Deci, the most important ingredient for motivating students is autonomy. 1
Having autonomy doesn’t mean that students decide what is taught in a lesson. Instead, students can experience autonomy if the lesson is set up so that they can individually choose which exercise to do first, second etc., how fast to work, when to ask the teacher a question or for help and even when to take a break.
A writing-workshop approach is an excellent way to give students autonomy. Here is how it can be done:
Step 1) The teacher briefly explains the assignments that student will be working on during the class.
Step 2) S/he returns any homework assignment that students had turned in and which the teacher had marked. They will correct these and show the teacher, but they DO NOT start writing yet.
Step 3) If there is a group-activity, the students do that. As each group finishes, they don’t have to wait for the others to finish. Instead, they start the assignments from Steps 1 and 2 individually.
Step 4) AUTONOMY! Students start the assignments by individually choosing which one they want to do first, second, third. At any time, they can ask the teacher any questions they might have and show him/her corrections from the returned assignment.
I wanted to encourage my Writing students to include information from their own country to support their ideas in their essays. If done well, this kind of information can be very enthralling for anyone who reads their papers. (See • The Huge Advantage International Student Writers Have Over Their American Classmates )
The problem was that, when they tried to do this, the information was often too general, which made it sound kind of trite. So, I decided to write an exercise in which they would see how effective detailed information could be.
For the exercise, I wanted to juxtapose weak short paragraphs with few details to strong ones with more , and then have students identify each type. The challenge for me was to come up with stimulating content for these short paragraphs.
Fortunately, I had a treasure chest filled with interesting content that I could draw from. And as I’ll demonstrate below, this treasure chest has been my go-to place when writing materials for all the other skills too.
Common Sense Teaching ESL 