Creative writing

I would like to share a classroom experience that I feel particularly happy about.

Last year, I tried out a creative writing activity with my 4th year students. During the week leading up to Halloween, I asked them to write a horror story set in school, the reason being that the creepiest stories are always those that happened near the place where they are being told. I gave the students a few pointers, asked them to get into groups of three, and gave them a bit of time to work on a basic horror story. They were a fairly strong class, and they delivered the goods. 

This year, I have a slightly weaker class in the same year level. Weaker in their language skills, but really imaginative and with a high level of commitment to any 'different' activity I bring to class. I pitched the task to them by first reading a horror story set at school (with some characters they recognised even after a name change, and some locations they could identify without trouble). Then, I explained the basics of story writing (rising action, climax, denouement), and gave them a target of two pages. This time they would work in pairs, and just like last year, I gave them time to work on their stories in class. 

Their response was amazing. They threw themselves into it- they weren't just completing an assignment, they really wanted to create scary stories, and they really wanted their classmates to picture their characters and what they were going through in no uncertain terms. They researched vocabulary I would never have dreamt of teaching them at their skill level, they used grammar structures we had just been working on the week before to express uncertainty and speculation (and if I may say so, successfully as well), and they even were a bit worried they would have to go over the 'limit' of two pages because their story just needed that extra bit of development, or to create a certain effect on the reader. 

To them, this was a writing assignment, yes, but it was also a chance to imagine something and bring it to life. 

To top it all off, we read the stories in class, curtains drawn and creepy music playing in the background. 

The general comment? "We should do this more often!"

You can check their stories (with some minor editing and corrections) clicking here. 

Project-based learning in the English classroom

http://blog.teacherspayteachers.com/project-based-learning/

One of the current trends in education is Project-based learning (henceforward PBL). For those who aren't familiar with the term, PBL is "a teaching method in which students gain knowledge and skills by working for an extended period of time to investigate and respond to an authentic, engaging and complex question, problem, or challenge" (www.bie.org/about/what_pbl). Therefore, it integrates different skills and disciplines, and as a result, learning becomes more meaningful to the student, making it longer-lasting and ultimately enabling them to develop key skills for lifelong learning. I'm a big fan of PBL (who wouldn't be?), but I also think it is a bit limited when it comes to language learning, which is why I have never designed a course solely based on PBL.

To begin with, in order to incorporate PBL successfully into your course, your students should have reached a certain level of proficiency. In other words, you would have to design a fairly basic project for absolute beginners. It is possible (I'm not saying it isn't), but language instruction would far outweigh project work. It is a lot easier once your students feel confident reading, listening, writing and speaking, and you can give them increasingly complex projects that involve extracting information, summarising, paraphrasing, using language for a particular purpose and other valuable skills necessary for academic success across all different subjects.

Another reason why I have never designed a full-on PBL course is that I believe guided language tuition is necessary even when students already feel confident with the language. A lot of them take external examinations, which require a lot of time and preparation. I believe that PBL works well when you are helping students with practical skills, but not so well when a certain level of accuracy is necessary (particularly when writing and speaking). This could be partly because you don't assess projects as a language product alone--you take into account other components, some of which may have little to do with English language skills. 

However, PBL is great in the sense that it poses a challenge for the students. For one, it forces them to work as part of a team, in which each member plays a different role. Second, I normally ask students to research something and create a product resulting from their research (for example, looking at the differences between living in a small town and in a big city, and creating a poster to summarise their findings). This means that students have to read, understand and rephrase using their own words, transforming source material into a different product. Finally, I normally have my students present their projects to the rest of the class orally.

The process of working on a project is complex, and if my students lack maturity, I guide their work by breaking down their tasks into steps, providing them with checklists and ensuring they understand every step. If they are a bit older and are already used to the method, they make their own checklists and work more independently.

As far as English is concerned, the benefits are multiple. Students read authentic material, and very often encounter words that are part of the same semantic group. Context helps students learn vocabulary, and unfamiliar words are identified and their meaning elicited. They are exposed to live English. Of course, each student is different and weaker students need more help, but the exposure to authentic material together with (online) dictionaries, teachers and teammates takes some of the pressure off. 

Have you tried PBL when teaching English? How was your experience? 

History of English: double words

Hi all,

I came across this short video recently, and I would like to share it in this blog. It illustrates neatly why we have some words that mean more or less the same thing, but that look very different.

This phenomenon isn't exclusive of the English language. In Spanish, for example, the words perro and can mean the same thing (dog), and their origins are different (Basque and Latin respectively), and there are countless other words like that. Without going into too much detail, this depends on how much one language has been exposed to others, whether or not one of the languages was used by the ruling classes or was considered more prestigious, and so on.

Apart from the words illustrated (sometimes, literally!) in the video, there are others. Can you think of any?Why do you think they have both survived and are in use nowadays? Feel free to use the Comments section below to post your ideas.

See you next time!

Welcome to English Lane

A good place to start is to introduce myself. 

I'm Maite, and I'm an English teacher at Colegio Base. 

I have recently started working on this blog to record some activities I use in class to help my students improve their skills. English skills have traditionally included speaking, writing, reading and listening, with grammar as the 'glue' holding language together. 

I think there is a stronger 'glue' than that, though--necessity! If you need to do something, you will learn how to do it more quickly, more easily, and with longer lasting effects. 

How do you create necessity without taking your students to an English speaking country and throwing them in at the deep end? Agreed, then. Some of these necessities are somewhat artificial but they begin by using English, and English alone, in the classroom. Ok, and charades, and the occasional pointing, visuals and onomatopoeia, but that's about it. 

I also create needs by giving students a challenge, be it a project, a written or oral assignment, or a quest of some sort, in which they have to research, connect information, and put it together in such a way that meaning is conveyed effectively so others can gain knowledge, or enjoy your product, or decide whether they agree or disagree with you. 

I'm not the only one doing this. I've learned from others and I'm really glad I have. With this blog, my intention is to show others how I do it, and to share some of my ideas with them.

Happy reading! 

Maite