Reflection - Ana - 2nd Session

The second session with Ana was dedicated to Reading.  Similar to listening it’s important to have clear stages in the reading process.  A pre-reading activity should serve as a way to activate previous knowledge of the subject and create interest in the topic.  The first reading, or gist activity, should deal with the global meaning of the text.  A second/third, or detailed, reading activity should explore the theme further.  All kinds of post-reading activities can be proposed after to develop the theme.  

It’s very important that students realise that it doesn’t matter if they don’t understand every word in the text - teaching the importance of understanding through context was deftly shown by Ana in the two transport readings.  It also gives the students a morale boost they need when they feel they’re struggling with the text.  

The next activity was about encouraging students to actually use the wonderful vocabulary they come across while learning English - replacing ‘nice’ with something a bit more expressive and different. It’s something I’ve seen in my students as well, last year, I banned my B1 classes from saying “I like’ and ‘I don’t like’ - when they put their mind to it they were able to think up all sorts of alternatives! However, this isn’t only something that happens to those learning English as a foreign language - I still remember to this day when my own Primary 6 teacher banned the use of ‘nice’ in all our written work!  

Reading doesn’t have to silent, and it can still be communicative.  Interesting texts, such as the bizarre sports, actually make students want to talk about what they’ve read, share their opinions and debate - if only all textbooks had such interesting texts… I’ve actually come across Chess Boxing in a textbook before, but it was an opportunity wasted!  I’m looking forward to the next sessions about bringing textbooks to life.  

As I’ve commented in my previous blog - and Ana and Luz have both mentionned it - it’s so important that we as teachers understand that skills are not stand-alone.  We focus often on just one of them as our aim for the class but, as these classes have demonstrated, everything is connected.  I won’t list all the rest of the activities here but, it’s safe to say, they’ve been filed away for future use!  

We then turned to look at a sample of some exams and of the proposed Reválida exam.  Ana explained how important it is to facilitate the experience for the students, by using pictures for all parts and by, for example, setting a writing on something connected with the listening so that students aren’t sitting in the exam stumped for ideas or context.  The Reválida itself, seemed to me to be very badly designed - far too much white space, having instructions on one page and the text on the other is a surefire way to make sure the students don't read it properly... also having detailed reading questions over the page from the text just makes it uncomfortable as students to have to turn back and forth to find the answer. The font is also far too big - I'd have to see the test again to think of more examples - but it's no wonder that Ana send 2 pages of complaints!  

I think we all nearly fainted when Ana told us that she has about 20 different ‘notas’ per students per term!  While legally just one test per term is required, in something like a language class it is simply not representative of what the students learn and what they are capable of doing. The more I think about it, 20 grades per students sounds about right!   

From my own experience, at the academy where I worked, students had an exam at the end of every term.  Sometimes it was heartbreaking to see students who had improved so much and for them to get a low mark for the end of term exam - they simply weren't that good at exams - they could see and I could see their improvement but the result didn't reflect it. In any subject, but especially languages, it’s so important to have continuous assessment.  End of term exams, are of course inevitable, but as Ana said, in languages it’s not about studying for the exam, it’s practice. I’ve seen this as well in Cambridge PET exams when I examine the speaking component.  It’s immediately obvious if a candidate has trained (or been trained) well - a good result is the fruit of practice and preparation - it’s simply not possible to cram the night before.  

I loved Ana’s analogy of what students learn over a school year and how knowledge should build up over that time rather than the idea that certain units are to be learned, examined and filed away:  

Term 1 - Hello my name is John

Term 2 - Hello my name is John, I’m from England.

Term 3 - Hello my name is John, I’m from England and I’m 17 years old.  

To finish off, I’ve included some of my favourite ‘oddities’ about the English Language, in the same vein as Ana’s Spellchecker: