Category Archives: • Advanced & High-Intermediate Levels

• Teacher-Friendly Technique to Keep Conversation Items Current, Relevant and Personalized for Students

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Imagine that you are teaching an ESL Conversation class. You put students in groups of three and give each member a different list of discussion questions to ask each other. Which of these questions do you think would be most relevant and interesting to answer today, December 16, 2023?
     -Do you like to go to concerts?
     -Are you a fan of Taylor Swift?
Or which of these two:
     -Do you worry about money these days?
     -Next term, our college’s tuition will increase. Will this be a problem for you?
Or which of these two:
     -What is the best age to get married?
     -Did you hear that our classmate, Silvia, got engaged yesterday?

Naturally, we’d like to make our discussion questions as relevant and personalized as possible for our students.  But that can be a special challenge for a couple of reasons:
    1) It would take a lot of time and mental energy to write up a new list of 15 current and personalized discussion questions every term.
    2) In the short time that we spend with a new group of students who are often from a different generation from us, it’s very difficult to know what they are currently interested in or what are recent trends among them.

Surprisingly, there is an easy way to make exercises current and personalized. And best of all, the teacher DOES NOT have to revise or update the items in the exercise every term.

This DOES NOT mean that we just tell students to get into groups and talk about anything they want. Instead, we still include structure to the activity.

Here is how we can do that.

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• Final ESL Conversation Speaking Tasks: Rating Three Methods

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REVISED Oral Exams Part 2 Cover shot

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:

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The three methods including a recommended one.

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• Effective Two-Way Tasks at Higher as Well as Lower and Intermediate Levels

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(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

We can also use this format to help Advanced-level student develop discussion skills such as:

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• LINCS Topic 2 What instructional strategies have you found to be motivating for English learners? 

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Cover Motive Blog June 2023 REV

(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.

I have found six ways to motivate students.

1) Give Students Autonomy

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.

Some of the benefits of the Workshop

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