Assessing Writing

Grading a piece of writing isn’t an easy task for examiners. Graders usually follow a holistic approach when grading a composition. In other words, they read through the writing test with a careful eye on content, language, and form and then decide on the overall grade/mark. This approach is easy and economical in terms of time and effort, but it isn’t without its drawbacks. It’s not accurate and the grade might sometimes be affected by the teacher’s attitude towards their students and their performance over the course. 

To avoid being biased, teachers should exchange their students’ exam papers and use writing criteria, which include scales from exemplary to limited performance. Several writing books include a writing rubric to be used by teachers in the assessment stage. An efficient rubric shows examples of good and limited writing outcomes with marks for each part. The teacher/grader could follow the rubric as a guide when grading. 

My advice is to attach a copy of the rubric with each test with marks on both and give them to the examinees. When teachers return their students’ graded writing tests, they can explain the given mark according to the rubric. So students check what went well and wrong with their writing. Even better, students should use the rubric themselves when writing a composition during the course to familiarize themselves with the features of a successful piece of writing.

Here is the writing rubric used to assess the IELTS writing exam, task two. 

Top 13 Tips for Effective Teaching of English

You need to keep in mind that learning is more important than teaching. To foster learning, you should be aware of the most useful techniques a successful teacher usually does in class. On the other hand, you also need to know what prevents learning. Here are my top 13 tips for conducting an efficient and effective English lesson. Check which ones you already do and which ones you ought to focus on more in the future. 

1 .     Build an instant rapport with learners. From the first lesson, try to establish a friendly rapport with your students. Use their names and involve them equally in activities. Bring energy into the class with your friendly and nice manner from the start.

2 .     Grade your language.  Speak clearly and naturally to give the students a good input of the target language. Avoid using metalanguage, especially in low-level classes.

3.     Reduce your teacher talking time (TTT). Aim for more students’ talking time (STT). Let your students practice their English, not you. Make your class more student-centered

4.     Enhance your lessons with visuals. Use a variety of visual materials such as pictures, videos, and PowerPoint slides that achieve your lesson aims and make your lesson more dynamic. A picture is worth a thousand words.

5.     Give clear, simple instructions. Break the instructions down and use instruction checking questions (ICQs) to check if the students have understood. Don’t ask general questions like “Do you understand?” If you’re using worksheets, it’s better to chest the worksheet, point to the exercise and give instructions before distributing the worksheets. Otherwise, the students will start reading and won’t pay full attention to your instructions.

6.     Vary the interaction patterns. Don’t opt for teacher-students (T-Ss) interaction only. Learning English happens faster when students interact more with others. Pair work and group work would maximize the students’ talking time and encourage peer-teaching. Make sure your lesson plan includes individual, pair, and group work.

7.     Don’t echo the students’ answers. Don’t get into the habit of repeating your students’ words (I’m afraid I do it sometimes). When you do that, you’re sending the message to your students that you’re the authority in class and there is no need to listen to each other. Don’t echo; ask the student speaking to raise their voice if the others can’t hear him/her.

8.     Avoid Over-helping. When the students are doing a task or giving answers in pair or whole class feedback, don’t worry that they can’t make it. Don’t complete their sentences; rather, give them a sufficient time to think, reflect, and produce their answers. Use gestures, one-word prompt and if those don’t work, ask another student for help to encourage peer-support/teaching. Be the last one to speak, not the first one. Help them be autonomous learners.

9.     Circulate and monitor. While the students are working on a task, whether individually or in pairs, you should circulate and monitor them to make sure everyone is on task. You might need to help those who still do not understand, or warn those chatting with their classmates, but don’t interfere or over-help.Engage those who finish early; ask them to find five adjectives in the text, for example, or write four sentences including the new words.

10. Vary the feedback stages. Instead of constantly nominating individual students to provide answers to the whole class in a T-Ss interaction, you can display the answers for them on the white board/screen to check. You could ask some students to come to the board and write the answers for the class after a brainstorming activity. Alternatively, you can provide one student with half of the answers and his/her partner with the other half. They work in pairs to exchange the answers; that would make the feedback more student-centered.

11.  Let your Students practice grammar. Don’t worry if the students don’t get the concept of the target language 100% from the first time, they still need a lot of practice to grasp the meaning and to be able to use the TL productively. Avoid long explanations; provide adequate controlled, semi-controlled, and freer-practice activities to help the students encounter and make more decisions about the TL over a number of contexts.

12. Set a time limit. Allocate a time limit for each task to get the students more challenged and focused. Stop the activity if most of the students have finished before the time is over or give more time if most of them are still involved. 

13.  Encourage your Students to speak English more. Don’t hear or understand your students when they talk to you in their mother tongue, accept only English. 
          
   Would you add any other useful techniques to the above list? Let us hear from you? 

Ace Your First Class with New Students

I give my first class a lot of consideration and thought for it is the very lesson that paves the way and lays the groundwork for the whole course. The first class of each new course is probably the most important for such reasons as getting to know my students, establish a friendly rapport, explain the course syllabus, and meet my students’ needs and demands for learning English. To ensure my first lesson goes smoothly and comfortably, I introduce the prescribed textbook but don’t use it on the first day of the course; rather, I set the first lesson for students to know about their teacher, classmates, and the components of the course. Here are some ideas to ace your first lesson with new groups.

Breaking the Ice 

After students and I introduce ourselves, the first thing that comes to my mind is how to build a congenial rapport and create a pleasant atmosphere. Breaking-the-ice activities are best to start with as they make learners interact and feel relaxed with each other. 

Paper ball game: This no-brainer game is most suitable for learners to memorize everyone’s name and have fun. Make a ball out of recycled paper and demonstrate the activity by asking one student to throw the ball to you, catch the ball and say your name; then say another student’s name and throw the ball to her; she catches it, says her name and then utters someone else’s name and throws it to them. The game goes on for a few minutes until everyone remembers their classmates’ names.

What are you thinking about now: Another quick game to break the ice is to ask students to throw a ball (see above) to each other and every time someone catches the ball, she tells the class what she is thinking about right now. Encourage the others to show interest and comment on what the student has said before she throws the ball to someone else to say what he/she is thinking about now. 

Getting to know you: Draw a star with five points on the board and write five words/phrases around the star. (your nationality, age, shoe size, years of experience, etc.). Tell students this is some information about you. They work in pairs for two minutes to form questions for those answers. Elicit the correct questions and elaborate on each answer. Next, ask students to draw a star on a piece of paper and write some personal information around it. Have them exchange their papers with their partner. Students should ask each other why they wrote that information and ask follow-up questions. Demonstrate the activity by taking a piece of paper from one of the students and ask: “Why did you write 2014?”, for example.  Keep the exchange going by asking some follow-up questions. Instruct students to take it in turns to ask and answer questions about each other. 

Needs Analysis

It is also vital in the first lesson to know more about your students’ learning styles and needs for learning English. I usually find an informal needs analysis is paramount at this stage. Probing students’ individual personal goals in learning English is something we should take into consideration from the beginning of each new course. For this reason, write up the following questions on the board and ask students to write answers to these questions (adapted from Martin, 2011).

• What do you need English for?
• How would you like to learn English?
• What activities do you prefer?
• What do you find interesting about learning English?
• What do you find difficult about learning English?
• What do you expect to learn in this course?
• What can you do to improve your English outside the class?

Once students have finished, get them discuss their ideas in small groups before you hold a plenary discussion about the answers. Listen carefully and take notes of students’ needs to refer to them during the course. You may want to add other questions more related to your students’ level and to the course your teaching. 

Course Syllabus

Now it is time to discuss the course syllabus and see if it or parts of it meet students’ needs for learning English. Write up the objectives of the course, textbooks, requirements and assignments, grading policy, and expectations. Clarify any unclear areas about the course and give advice on how students should do during the course to get high grades and get the most out of the course. You may also want to explain the methodology that you’re going to use to achieve the aims of the course and the rationale behind it. 

Classroom Rules

Classroom rules vary from one institute to another and from one age group to another. Yet, it is a good idea to negotiate the classroom rules with students. Don’t be very strict and let them have a say in the rules. That would make them feel they are being respected and treated as equals. I usually write the following rules and explain the reasons for them. 

• Arrive promptly for classes.
• Bring your books and notebook.
• Refrain from using your cell phones; put all your phones on silent mode. If you have an urgent call, step outside into the corridor.
• Don’t make fun of your friends.
• Speak only in English. 

That’s all for the first class, but if you’re teaching English for Specific Purposes (ESP) or Academic Purposes (EAP), it would be beneficial to have students write a short paragraph about how English would make their studies or jobs better in the future. Students read their paragraphs in groups and discuss their ideas. This activity helps the teacher gets a better idea of the students’ linguistic strengths and weaknesses.

What activities do you use in your first class? Share your ideas with us in the comment box below?

References

Martin, M. (2011). Approaching a first class with a new group. www.onestopengish.com.

Top Five Recycling Activities

The variety of topics in commercial English learning textbooks provide learners with a large number of new vocabulary items on different subjects. However, since most coursebooks jump from one unit to another in a relatively short time, learners don't have adequate time to practice the items they have encountered and retain them in long-term memory. Learners need to encounter the new words, phrases, and chunks several times to be able to remember and use them appropriately. 
To overcome the problem of forgetting words quickly, English teachers are recommended to conduct recycling activities that ensure working on previously taught vocabulary over a number of sessions. I often include a recycling activity in my lessons as a warmer, time filler, or end-of-lesson activity. Warmers and time-fillers are best to be related to previous lessons to give learners the chance to work on the same language items in different contexts. My students often appreciate and enjoy any recycling activity that has a game-like feature. End-of-lesson recycling activities usually relieve tension after some serious work during the lesson.. 

Here are my top five recycling activities that you may find in ELT books with different variations.

Taboo: Prepare a list of vocabulary items you want to review. Put students into groups of four and give them a set of cards with a previously learned word on each. Below each target word, there are usually three taboo words the person who has the card can't use. Instruct students to put the pile of cards face down. One student takes a card and defines the target word to the rest of the group. The other students should guess the word on the card to win it. If no one guesses the word, the card goes to the bottom of the pile. Students take it in turns to pick up a card and define the word. The one with the most cards wins at the end. See here a set of taboo cards for intermediate level learners. With low-level students remove the taboo words or only include one and have students use whatever words they know to define the target word. Click here to get a set of taboo game cards for elementary. 

You should provide students with useful language for the game such as:

It’s something that you use to…

It’s someone who …

It’s an adjective, noun, verb, adverb, etc.

It’s the opposite of … /similar to

Playing taboo recycles vocabulary items and engages students in using their language skills to negotiate meanings of words. Yet, the game doesn’t test if students can use the target words in correct sentences. for this reason, I have students put the cards face down again on the table. Now each student takes a card and has 30 seconds to form a statement using the word on the card. The other students decide if the sentence is correct or not and if they are in doubt, they can consult with the teacher. If the sentence is incorrect, the card goes to the bottom of the pile and another student takes a new card. Again, the one with the most cards wins. if time doesn't allow, students could do either activity. 

Anagrams: An effective and easy activity that involves cognitive work is anagrams. It is a game-like activity, in which students unscramble words from randomly written letters. Write a list of vocabulary items for revision on the board with their letters in jumbled order (such as utelerc, nrasmei – for lecture, seminar). Get students work in pairs to unscramble the anagrams. The pairs who finishes first wins, and they are asked to come up to the board to write the words for the others to check the correct spelling. You can involve students with more productive tasks using anagrams; Click here to read more about it. 

Hot seat: it is a guess game similar to taboo but done with the whole class. Divide the class into two or three groups. Have one student from each group come and sit with his/her back to the board. Write a word on the board for the teams who have to define, explain, or give synonyms/ antonyms of the word to the students in front to guess. The student (facing the teams) who guesses first gets his/ her team a point. Next, those students go back to their seats and other two students (depending on the number of teams) come to sit in the front with their backs to the board. Continue the activity until each student in each team has a turn to sit in the front and try to guess a word. The team with the most points wins.

Bingo: A simple, fun game that involves all my students for the sense of completion it has is Bingo. It’s also one of the easiest activities to set. Write a list of 16-17 words to review on the board. Have students draw a grid with nine squares. Then they choose nine words from the list and write them in the squares.

Tell your students that you are going to give definitions of nine words from the list. Each time a student thinks you have given a definition of a word in his/her grid, he/she crosses it out. The one who crosses out all the nine words first shouts BINGO and wins. Once the game is over, you may want to facilitate a productive task using the words on the board. Get students write about five sentences using words from the list. Next they exchange the sentences with their partners to check and give feedback on the language and content. 

Find someone who: This mingle activity could be used to practice or review any

vocabulary or grammar items. Prepare 12 to 15 statements using vocabulary or concepts that relate to your previous unit of study. For example, if you taught a unit on technology, prepare statements such as the following:

Find someone who

…uses social media networks for more than three hours a day.                            

… has used online banking recently.

…plays online games.

…writes on a blog.

Announce that students will ask each other questions. Instruct students to find others who can answer their questions with “yes”. They should write a different name next to each statement. Pass out the worksheet and elicit the correct question form for each statement on the list. Now students mingle around the class asking their peers and write that person’s name on their checklist sheet and go on to the next question with another person. A student can write a person’s name only twice. Encourage students to ask follow-up questions for each statement to make the activity more conversational. If you have only one student, change the phrase "find someone who" to "remember someone who".
 

Do you use any other interesting recycling activities? Share your ideas with us. 

Teacher’s Roles in ESP Class

I’m genuinely grateful that my friend Abdullah Ajjan Alhadid has written a guest post for us on the different roles that teachers usually adopt in ESP courses. Abdullah is a holder of a BA in English Language and Literature as well as an MA in TESOL. He’s currently an EFL instructor at Istanbul University.

Since the 1960s, English for Specific Purposes (ESP) has grown to become one of the most prominent areas of EFL teaching today, and teachers need to be able to address both language and content within their classrooms. As the name suggests, ESP refers to teaching or studying English for a particular career like law, medicine, business, etc. ESP teachers are almost always teachers of English for General Purposes, and their switch into this field is sudden (Steven, 1988). To understand teaching ESP more profoundly, we need to understand the teacher's various roles in ESP classes: teacher, course designer and material provider, collaborator, and evaluator. 

The role of the ESP practitioner as a teacher is almost the same as the role of General English teacher. The methodology changes as the teaching becomes more specific. In the case of ESP classes, the teacher is no longer the “primary knower”. Students may know more about the content than the teacher. The relationship is much more of a partnership. In the case of very specific courses, the students themselves are frequently the primary knowers of the carrier content of the material. The teacher’s main role is to generate real, authentic communication in the classroom on the grounds of the students’ knowledge. In some situations the role of ESP teachers extends to giving one-to-one advice to students. ESP teachers need to have considerable flexibility, be willing to listen to learners, take interest in the disciplines or professional activities the students are involved in, and to take some risks in their teaching.

The aim of the role of ´course designer´ and ´materials provider´ is the same in both ESP and General English courses; the teacher has to provide the most suitable materials in the lesson to achieve the set goals. Dudley-Evans and St John, (1998) argue that ESP instructors often have to plan the course they teach and provide the materials for it. It is rarely possible to use a particular textbook without the need for supplementary material. The role of ESP teachers as ‘providers of material’ thus involves choosing suitable published material, adapting material when published material is not suitable, or even writing material where nothing suitable exists. Moreover, ESP teachers need to assess the effectiveness of the teaching material used on the course, whether that material is published or self-produced.

Hutchison and Waters (1987) argue that ESP teachers do not need to learn the subject matter’s specialized knowledge. Rather, they are asked for the following requirements: a positive attitude towards ESP content, knowledge of the fundamental principles of the content, and an awareness of how much they probably already know. The role of the ESP practitioner as a collaborator is connected with working closely or collaborating with field or subject specialists in order to meet the specific needs of the learners and accordingly adopt the methodology and activities of the target discipline. Thus, an ESP teacher conducting an ESP course for would-be doctors will probably need the help of a doctor to help him or her plan the content of the course. Furthermore, it is difficult for teachers to look for the resources or even to design a syllabus by themselves, so that they need the help of a specialist teacher to help them understand the materials and find resources. When team teaching is not a possibility, the ESP practitioner should collaborate more closely with the learners, who will generally be more familiar with the specialized content of materials than the teacher himself/herself. The fullest collaboration is when a subject expert and a language teacher teach classes together.

The role of an ‘evaluator’ is highly important in the whole learning process. It is necessary to inform students about their progress in their language learning and that is why giving feedback is an inevitable part of each activity (Laurence, 2007).  An evaluator is not a new function, and evaluation is actually performed in General English classes; but in the case of ESP, this role seems to be very significant. The ESP practitioner is often involved in various types of evaluation ranging from testing to evaluation of courses and teaching materials. As ESP courses are often tailor-made, their evaluation is crucial. Evaluation of course design and teaching materials should be done while the course is being taught and after the course has finished in order to assess whether the learners have been able to make use of what they learned and to find out what they were not prepared for. Evaluation through discussion and on-going needs analysis can be used to adapt the syllabus. Hence, constant evaluation is an important factor and an important role of the teacher to create a successful ESP course.

The conclusion to be drawn is that if the ESP community hopes to grow, it is vital that the community as a whole understands what ESP actually represents, and can accept the various roles that ESP practitioners need to adopt to ensure its success.  Only then can new members join with confidence, and existing members carry on the practices which have brought ESP to the position that it has in EFL teaching today.

References

Hutchison, T., & Waters, A. 1987. English for Specific Purposes: A Learning-centered Approach. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

Strevens, P. ESP after Twenty Years: A Re-appraisal. Tickoo Ltd, 1988.

Anthony, Laurence. Defining English for Specific Purposes and the Role of the ESP Practitioner. 1997. Journal Papers. 1 May 2007 < http://iteslj.org/Articles/Gatehouse- 0ESP.html >

Dudley-Evans, T. and St. John, M. Developments in English for Specific Purposes: A Multi-Disciplinary Approach. Cambridge University Press, 1998.

  

Including Assessment Results in Teaching

As an English teacher, you will be most frequently measuring your students’ progress by giving such different kinds of assessments as homework, assignments, quizzes and tests on a regular basis. Likewise, you will be involved in marking those assessment tasks. Whether you mark your students’ work subjectively (depending on your overall impression of the work as in assessing a composition or a role-play) or objectively (where there is usually one correct answer as in gap-fills and MCQs), you will notice common errors students have made. It is best to include those errors in upcoming teaching sessions and use them as an opportunity for learning. After all, the purpose of assessment is not to check what students can’t do, but to check what progress they have made and what they still need to work on.

Keep a record of the most frequent errors that occurred in the previous form of assessment. You might collect grammar, vocabulary, structure mistakes from discrete-point tests (testing individual language points such as word or sentence transformation task) and/or integrative tests (ie one question such as a role-play testing a number of items or skills). These common errors should be included in remedial sessions after tests. Here are five activities you can perform after each assessment. 

1. Paper skirt: Minh Mai (2015) outlines a creative, competitive activity involving sentence correction. Prepare a piece of paper with sentences containing mistakes that the students have made. Put one sentence on each line and space them so that the paper can be cut into strips which remain joined at the top, to form a skirt. Put the students in small groups and give each group a ‘skirt’. The students take turns to tear a strip away, correct the sentence and present it to the teacher. Monitor and be around the groups for confirmation. The team that finishes first wins.

2. If the school system allows sharing tests questions with students after the test, you could simply hand a blank copy of the test to each pair of students. Alternatively, display the test questions on the smart board or project them onto the board or wall. Have the students discuss each task in pairs. Elicit/give the answers the questions and explain any confusion and difficulties for the students to avoid in the future.

3. If the common mistakes are just a few, an economical technique to apply is to write the mistakes on the board in example sentences or as they have been occurred in the test and ask the students to work in pairs to correct them. Elicit the correct form and use of each target item. It is better to include some correct sentences, so the students are challenged to find the wrong ones among all the sentences and correct them. Don’t forget to praise them for the correct language use as well.

4. In terms of writing exams, you could choose one composition that includes some common mistakes that you want to pinpoint to the students. Give a copy of that composition with the name removed in order not to offend the person who has made the mistakes. Alternatively, you could display that piece of writing on the screen. Allocate a time limit (depending on the length of the writing) to students to read the text and find any vocabulary mistakes, grammar errors, misuse of linkers, incorrect punctuation, etc. 

Have students compare their findings and comment on the text in pairs before soliciting open-class feedback. Remember to focus on the good use of language in the text. It is better to start with praising the correct use of grammar, vocabulary, punctuation, before shedding light on the misuse of language. 

You would also choose to comment on task completion and form. Ask the students such questions as: “Do all the supporting sentences relate to the controlling idea?” Which sentences should we omit from the paragraph and why?” At the end, give a score to the composition and discuss your decision with students according to some writing criteria. That would help them understand how assessment is being conducted. 

5. As for speaking exams, you could record your students’ production and select one audio anonymously and play it back later for students so as to find any misuse of language or any communication breakdowns. Hold an open-class discussion about the speaking test by playing and pausing the listening track; praise any good use of the language and highlight common mistakes; have students correct the errors. Discuss your score with the students and finish the activity by giving advice for upcoming speaking exams.  

These errors provide an insight into the students’ linguistic difficulties, and they should be taking into consideration when you prepare forthcoming classes. Conducting assessment tasks and then throwing them away would not help students to avoid repeating the same mistakes. By dedicating a session for common errors made in tests in our teaching schedule, students will have the chance to learn from their and others’ mistakes and try to improve their test results.

Do you include students’ errors in your teaching? Do you have any other ideas or suggestions to be added to the list above?

References

Mai, T., M. (2015). One more time. English teaching professional. (101) 22-23.

Global Problems

Global problems such as poverty, corruption, and racism are constantly on the rise. We always hear about them among others in every kind of media and it seems as there are no practical solutions to those human dilemmas in the near future. Thus, I considered preparing an integrated skills lesson about three common world problems for my intermediate and upper-intermediate classes. 

I didn't follow the conventional procedure of a reading lesson plan, where students read a text for the first time to get the general idea of the topic (skimming). Then they scan (read more thoroughly) it to find specific information. 

I have designed a "reverse reading" lesson as it is called by Prentis (2014). In this lesson, I started with an engaging lead-in followed by general speaking questions about the topic before reading the text. The reading text is divided into three paragraphs. Students are put in threes; each one reads a paragraph and reports to the group. I integrated speaking with reading skills in this lesson to make it more communicative and learner-centered. Finally, students conduct some vocabulary work before they reflect on the reading and discuss three more questions in groups. 

Feel free to use the lesson and let me know how it goes. Click here to download the lesson plan. 

Ref. 

Prentis, N. (2014) Reverse reading conversation lessons. Modern English teacher (23), 3, 68-69.