I am following IATEFL conference online. Today I watched Jim Scrivener‘s workshop on High Demand.
He started by asking what students usually complain about in their lessons and some of the answers were: “It’s boring, It’s too easy or too difficult, It’s too much work, There’s nothing new, It’s too slow, I want Grammar, The teacher doesn’t correct”
The, he asked: “Am I engaging the full human learning potential of the students in my class?”
- Are my learners capable of more?
- Am I under-challenging my students?
- Would my students learn more If I demanded more of them? How would I do that?
- Have the tasks and techniques I use in class become rituals and ends in themselves? ( Is a game more important than the thing students are supposed to learn by playing this game?)
- how can I stop “covering material” and start focusing on the potential for deeper learning?
- What small shifts or tweaks can I make to what I already do to transform the focus of my teaching towards getting learning happening?
The (evolving) Manifesto
- It’s Ok to teach (Do we think that learning will emerge magically?)
- You have permission to be an interventionist teacher
- We need to focus on where the learning is
- Learn the classroom management techniques that make a difference
- Work at everyone’s pace – not just the fastest few
- Risk working hands-on with language (How do we dare to work with textbooks rather than asking students to open their books and do exercise Nº …)
- expect more – Demand High
How can we get more from the material we are using?
He suggested focusing on one common stage, and this stage is the feedback/assessment stage.
So, when we are checking an exercise, aside from this is good and this is wrong, what else can we explore?
He handed out copies including these ideas:
Checking answers in ways that avoid rubber-stamping
- (silence … creative waiting … thinking space …)
- Are there any other answers?
- Do you agree with her answer? What do you think?
- “Blank face”
- “Devil’s advocate”
Behind the answer
- Whyis that the answer?
- Why do you think the person said that?
- Wheremight someone say this?
- Whowould say it?
- How would they say it?
- Put it in an A/B conversation. What is said before or after?
Listening
- Listen to me saying it. Don’t repeat. Replay my voice in your head.
- Listen to how she says it. Hear the language and music in your head.
- Listen to the echo of my voice in your head. Now … change it (to a parent, a friend, star etc).
Feelings / paralinguistic features
- What face would you make when you say it?
- Any movement?
- Try it stronger, weaker. Does changing your face / movement change how you say it?
Pronunciation
- Mumble it.
- Hum the tune of the sentence, but don’t say any words.
- Say it faster, more fluently.
- How many syllables?
- Where are the stressed syllables? Which is strongest?
- Is “…X …” stressed? Why / why not?
- Listen to me. Where do I stress it?
- Make a stress diagram e.g. ooOooOoo
- Say only the stresses. Say it to your partner. With feeling. Get meaning across with just stresses.
- Put the “little” words back between the stresses … but take the same length of time to say it all!
- Is it possible to change the stress? What does that do to the meaning?
- How did I pronounce “the”? (or other words) e.g. noticing weak forms.
- Put it together with the next word / the word before / the chunk / the clause.
- Compare this student saying it with me saying it. Think: are there any differences?
- (Not just the right words in the right order – but the best you can say it). Say it to me / to your partner / across the room / mingling with lots of people. Close your book – recall it. Whisper it.
Practice
- Drills. How to make them thrilling, fully engaging, genuinely upgrading? loudly / quietly / whispering / shouting / chanting / slowly / fast / exaggerated intonation
- Listen to your partner … help her to say it better! She says it > you listen > you give feedback > she tries again > you give more feedback etc.
- They don’t learn from explanations. They learn from practice > feedback> upgrade > practice etc. It is the practice that makes the difference. And not a little. A lot!
Memory
- Close your books. Can you recall the sentence?
- What was the sentence before this one?
Mistakes
- What is your favourite mistake with this?
- Now that you can say it correctly … can you remember the mistake you started with?
- Say both – the mistake … then correction.
- Keep trying it, with feedback each time, again and again. Practice does make better!
Playful with grammar and lexis
- Can you change the verb to a different one?
- Does that change the meaning?
- Change one word. Make a new sentence with the same meaning.
- Can you make the sentence using “… X …” instead of “… Y …”?
- Can you make a sentence with a similar meaning using different words? … and another … and another … and another
- Could we miss out one word without really changing the meaning?
- Can you say the sentence using exactly 7 words? 13? 1? (NB Tasks don’t have to be possible to be useful)
- Can you change the word order of any of these words?
- Make a new sentence starting with “Next week …” Starting “If …” Starting “You…”
- What other words can we use instead of “concert”?
- Change the formality, context, relationship etc
Working modes
- Whole class, alert, engaged. You keep varying who you challenge and how.
- Can you pitch the challenge to an individual’s need: the upgrade that is most relevant to that student at that moment?
- “One-to-one within a group”: help one student upgrade her production of one sentence, while you as teacher remain in touch with the others and aim to keep them engaged.
- Can you avoid “yap” mode? Intervene with authority but using “the least that is enough”.
- “How did you do that?” “What did you have to do to do it?” “What makes it easy / difficult?”
Final thoughts:
I fully agree that learning a language does not happen magically and unless we have our students practise and drill Grammar, Vocabulary or any area of the language, they won’t be able to be good English speakers or writers; but I also think that finding the right balance between Demand High and time constraints along with students feeling happy when learning is quite challenging. I do not want to sound demagogic, but I also feel students need freedom to experiment the fun of learning and mistakes are part of any learning process.
However, as soon as I finished watching this conference I included some elements of Demand High, like asking my student to repeat a sentence in his head and come out with the music of this sentence until he was ready to reproduce it, and then I asked him to say the sentence whispering, shouting, expressing surprise. I asked him to use different verbs, then nouns, and then to change the number. The starting sentence was: “They asked for a ransom of 1,000,00 dollars”. We both enjoyed this Demand High exercise. I think I will try High Demand more often using the battery of techniques in the handout provided by Jim Scrivener
Check the blog he created with Adrian Underhill to find out more on this topic
However, as soon as I finished watching this conference I included some elements of Demand High, like asking my student to repeat a sentence in his head and come out with the music of this sentence until he was ready to reproduce it, and then I asked him to say the sentence whispering, shouting, expressing surprise. I asked him to use different verbs, then nouns, and then to change the number. The starting sentence was: “They asked for a ransom of 1,000,00 dollars”. We both enjoyed this Demand High exercise. I think I will try High Demand more often using the battery of techniques in the handout provided by Jim Scrivener
Check the blog he created with Adrian Underhill to find out more on this topic