A teacher once said that she avoided pair work during conversation lessons because she wouldn’t be able to monitor all the students to catch their grammar mistakes. Is this a legitimate reason? Researchers have studied what, in fact, happens when students work in pairs with other students and when they work with non-native speakers which can dispel some of the mis-assumptions about the drawbacks to pair work.
(This posting includes a handout which you are welcome to use with your students.)*
In our college, there was a category of ESL students who stymied the instructors. They were fluent speakers but continually struggled with basic the grammar on writing tasks. Any ESL program that has immigrant students will probably have these types of students described as “ear-learners” or Generation 1.5.
Gen 1.5 students are sort of between first generation and second generation immigrant. They immigrated with their family when they were elementary or high school age.
A growing number of these students indicate a goal of obtaining a college degree. However, unfortunately, many of them struggle to make the transition from studying basic English skills in ESL courses to taking academic ESL and mainstream academic courses.
Among those who do apply to colleges, a considerable number do not meet the minimum standards for writing and are thus not accepted.
I, along with two colleagues, were able to get a grant a few years ago to study these students and to develop an approach to helping them learn grammar for writing by taking into consideration their special learning styles.
In this posting,
(This posting includes a handout which you are welcome to use with your students.)*
1) Since almost all the students were living away from home, they were able to relate to the challenge of connecting to new people.
2) They seemed interested in hearing how their classmates were coping with living away from home: some loved it and some felt lonely.
3) They enjoyed discussing how social media is both helpful and harmful especially concerning making connections to people.
4) They seemed surprised that some of their classmates are not especially connected to their family members.
Here is the basis for this discussion: According to research, loneliness has little connection to how many people are around us. In his book, Lost Connections, Jonathan Hari explains that loneliness is caused by a loss of connection to others. To end loneliness, according Hari, we need two things: other people and a feeling that we are sharing something meaningful or something we care about with another person or other people.
1) A one-page article usually including a brief summary of a high-interest research study.
2) Ten true-false comprehension questions.
3) Pre-Discussion Exercise in which students read and think about several questions about their experience and opinions about the topic before discussing them in groups.
4) Small-group discussions of the article in which each student is given a paper with different content/personal experience questions in the form of Student A, B or C.
(This posting includes a handout which you are welcome to use with your students.)*
At first, this pair-work activity looks like it’s about getting students to talk a lot by filling information in a chart. But that’s not the most important value of it.
Yes, students will talk a lot during this. But by including a short pre-exercise, they will see how they should ask clarification questions when they need more information or if they didn’t understand. Asking clarification questions is the strategy that they can use in future conversation situations in and outside the classroom.
In this activity, the students will be filling in information about a class schedule. They’ll need to listen to their partners tell them the name of courses, days, times and room numbers. They’ll have many chances to ask questions, especially if they don’t understand.
