ACTIVITY: DINNER DATE ROLEPLAY
Rationale
The role-playing should be contemporary, making it more relevant and practical to their experiences outside of the classroom. For example, a scene between a husband and a wife may not be relatable to them and therefore the grammar acquisition is less effective, as there is no real context in the students’ lives to immediately put it to use outside the CLASSROOM. Being aware of what the students are dealing with in their everyday lives will improve the connections they will find between the lessons and their lives. The role-plays should also be written as if they are to be spoken by natural native speakers, so that they are as real as possible for your ESL students (Simpson 61). For the lower level students, presenting them with the less open-ended scenario, with more suggested grammatical structure under the YOU responses. This allows them to focus on recalling and practicing grammatical structure and syntax order they have previously learned as well as acquire new vocabulary from the modeled example. Following Bloom’s Taxonomy, this meets with the lowest level of learning, yet gives them the room and the freedom to use any previous knowledge they have and apply it. Especially for the lower levels, it is important that the role-playing scenarios are modeled, both in written form and orally so the students understand what they are expected to perform and note how it sounds. Also such an oral activity is important to indicate the differences between oral English grammar and written English grammar, and that, in many cases, the grammar rules are flexible in their spoken form (Jean 480). The modeling also gives students an example of authentic language discourse and verbal grammatical constructs and sounds, which are local and will thus likely improve both their active communicative and listening skills (Jean 480). While students must actively listen and respond to each other during a role-play, an additional component can be added to add further authenticity and real challenge to the activity, by having students who are not directly involved in the exchange to ask one question in response to their peer who is answering the roleplaying situation. Again, this builds upon the premise that the role-play is mimicking real life responses and conversation. For the higher L2 levels, students can construct their own role-play scenarios focusing around past continuous tense, or a combination of it and several other tenses they have learned prior. The grammatical focus of the role-play can be tailored to suit whatever any level and/or construct that is desired. To add an additional layer to the activity, realia and props can be used to improve it’s authenticity and also just make it more fun and accessible. This may also mean rearranging the classroom environment to mimic the actual setting of the role-play.
These role-playing scenarios are both culturally relevant to the here and now, but may become outdated and irrelevant to future students. There are many textbooks that come with a plethora of roleplaying scenarios, which I think, have their value to grab ideas from and direction. There are issues with textbooks, including the roleplaying situations, may not reflect the dynamics, the demographics and the needs of your students. Further more textbook role-playing scenarios also do not represent the cultural reality, authentic language use and also may be inaccurate (Haynes 22). The danger of this is that students will be acquiring language and grammar that they might not ever utilize; due to either it’s archaic use of language or may be contextually irrelevant to students. Criticism of the texts extends beyond reality, indicating a promulgation of stereotyping (e.g. Mukundan & Nimehchisalem, 2008) as well as simply bland, non-engaging textbooks (Masuhara, Haan, Yi & Tomlinson, 2008). (Haynes 23). This makes the creation of new texts imperative, as well as being aware of not supporting stereotypes or bias within the roleplaying. From experience of teaching English using role-play scenarios in China, I know that students may also need these cultural cues as well. It is important to note if students are using stereotypes or archaic language or grammar, as they may not be aware of it as well. The role-plays will give them general cultural language that they may not be accustomed to, which gives them more of a sense of how to “fit in” to a new culture (cultural-general learning) (Frank 2).
The assessment of roleplaying, in this case, is purely formative. The students are being assessed for a specific grammatical construct, in this case, the students are instructed to use the past continuous tense to indicate what they were doing in specific situations, while or until something interrupted them. Thus the focus of assessment should entail feedback and corrections in regards to syntax, grammatical structure and since this is an oral activity, larger pronunciation issues. Larger pronunciation issues mean not every little mistake the student makes, which can demoralize students, but specifically pronunciation errors around sounds that when mispronounced, meaning is lost. In general, I think pronunciation should only be corrected around that issue. Over correction of pronunciation or accent reduction, encroaches upon assimilating all dialects into a homogenous sounding English that disregards the many cultures, peoples and places where English is spoken and places the teacher’s own bias or predisposition of what English should sound like, above other equally valid forms of it. Working within the pairs also allows for peers to assist each other and assess their own use of the tense, vocabulary as well as pronunciation.
In general, Role playing increased motivation, retention and active participation (Gathumbi and Masembe, 2005; Rogers and Evans, 2008; Dick and Carey 2010; Rao and Ravishankar, 1982; Collie and Slater, 1987 and Broughton 1980), can be used as an alternative version of an oral examination, or formative assessment, with very clear learning outcomes, and can reinforce language and grammatical structures taught in previous lessons (Hong 2010) (120), enabling your ESL students to be good communicators (Zheng, 1993 and Hoecherl & Boyce, 1994 and Ments, 2009) (Julius 120). It also gives us a chance to exam how different people from different background react to specific situations and allows us to ask further questions of: A) why people do not act or think the same way? B) What factors shape how we see the world and other people? (Frank 8).
ACTIVITY 2: STUDENT BLOGS
Rationale
The blog acts as a form of authentic composition. With the blogs, the teacher and students can go through each component of specific type of writing, breaking down the form, structure, vocabulary and other authentic writing issues. (DelliCarpini 99). For beginners, teacher-centred learning isn’t a bad method, as students need the additional support and guidance and do not have the tools yet to communicate beyond basic meaning. Yet, even for beginning speakers, the blog provides a space where the teacher, students and their peers all work on both a very personal, yet very collaborative learning project (Grammi 45). This means that stronger students and the teacher may guide the weaker students through the process with peer feedback, without inhibiting their ability to express themselves and desire to gain the additional language to express themselves more thoroughly. Giving students this autonomy and freedom, allows them to explore and make mistakes, without feeling as if they are being formally assessed. Along with grammar, abstract concepts such as critical thinking, readership and audience can be demonstrated in a way that is not possible strictly in the classroom (Gammi 45). For the earlier learners, a prompts or topics may alleviate some of the pressure from the students, who may find the task of free writing already quite daunting (Munca-Aftenev 137).
In this case, the activity is used as a formative assessment to indicate to me as a teacher, if students are able to combine two grammar rules into a singular blog post. This activity can be expanded to act as a summative assessment for the end of a unit, where students must use several different grammar rules a certain number of times, to see if they can accomplish the highest point of achievement on Bloom’s Taxonomy chart, that is authoring and creating, using the knowledge that was previously taught. The students are given checklists to remind them of both the grammatical components they are focusing on and the general rules to blog writing. This activity is done weekly, with the grammar focuses changed. The grammar is outlined and modeled on my own personal teacher weblog. The weblog acts as a modeling tool for how to use the grammar in a real life situation, as well as it provides additional vocabulary, grammar structures and blog practices. Different blogs can be accessed to show both the range of topics and English registers utilized by bloggers, depending on personal choices, intentions or context. Depending on the level of the students, as well as the class dynamics, some of the earlier blogging time can be done in class. If possible, having the students to complete a one routine blog entry and one peer response every week outside of class, emulates a more reality based example of how people write blogs, as well as giving them as sense of autonomy and decreased levels of performance anxiety from not being in the classroom environment. Each week, students are given checklists of what they need to include in the blog entry. As the student’s grammar and vocabulary increase, so should the checklist increase in steps. The checklists are filled out in class. They act as clear objectives for the students to follow for each week’s blog entry and give them an opportunity to clarify, if any of the instructions are unclear. It also acts as a formative assessment for the teacher, to notify if the students are able to give examples of what is being taught or that it is still unclear and additional scaffolding or practice is required.
The blog gives students the ability to partake in global interactions and have their work read by their peers and beyond. Additional components of the internet, that may be culturally specific may be taught as well as the grammar and vocabulary associated with them, including Internet etiquette and the different forums (blog, social media, search engines). This is also important for students and teachers to aknowledge the connection between literacy and technology and the further exploration of it, as it becomes more and more prevalent in their lives (Tanti 133). As part of the checklist, students are encouraged to engage in the Creative Commons. Each week, it might be a new challenge, such as inserting two pictures from the Creative Commons into their blog. This also expands the lesson beyond grammar and written communication, to include a visual component of additional meaning. Again, it will also personalize the blogs further, if the students are given free reign to “decorate” them. The blogs also become a personal reference for students in the future to track their progress as English language learners, as a reminder of grammatical structures, as well as modeling for future students.
The random draw in class for who each student responds to means that every will receive a response and that students will not be able to simply respond to people who are their friends. The peer feedback allows for further grammar and vocabulary practice, offering suggestions for improvement and also validate each student’s blog as valid (Gedera 17). The peer feedback also gives students more confidence, to see that their peers are also learners and may also may mistakes (Li, 2009) (Gedera 17). The feedback also gives students an audience to write for, which makes them responsible for how they would like to present themselves in English, as well as editing their work, which hopefully helps to advance their storytelling and creative writing abilities (McNamarra, 2008) (Tanti 135). The responses and blogs extend the use of English outside the classroom, into our students lives and may promote its use in other aspects of their lives (Arrifin 129). Both the responses and the blogs have the possibility of extending beyond the required posts per weeks and become a source of sharing and expression for the students (Munca-Aftenev 179). For an example of this:
http://david09new.blogspot.ca/
ACTIVITY 3: LISTENING TO MUSIC
Rationale
Music exists around the world and its cross-cultural influences defy language and cultural barriers. When I lived in China, the most listened to song on the radio was Justin Bieber’s “Baby”. In Prague, Czech Republic, the best lesson I had with my students was dissecting their favorite song’s lyrics, which just so happen to be from Canadian musician Avril Lavigne’s song “Sk8er Boy”. Music is also used around the world as an ESL and educational tool, due to its universality and invitation to participate within a global community (Li 74). Like many other of the activities, music sensitizes students to the need for intercultural communication. With both the music and blog activity, students will not just learn about other cultures, but realize that they are educators as well, and are ambassadors for their own cultures as well (Li 77). Listening to music is, at it’s base form, a version of repetition and memorization and yet it is not. The language in this activity is prescribed by the students, not the teacher and the source isn’t decontextualized words, but words and grammatical structure in a song. A study conducted with ESL students in Mainland China, compared students did a test after a rote memorization of grammar activity versus students who did a music based activity, and concluded that students who used music obtained higher grades and had better attitudes towards the test (Li 73). Knowing the song lyrics and their meanings so that they can sing along is one of the motivations behind using them in an activity. Another reason is that in real life, students will be forced to listen to people speak in a rapid fashion, to which the must respond. With a song, students have the security of being able to revisit the songs more than once. ESL learners meet listening with stress and anxiety as they are suppose to listen and respond in some matter, either by identify words, meanings or answering questions to what they are listening to (Vandergrift 3). Songs also usually have repetitive sections, with the lyrics sung at a slower rate, giving students the time to process what they are hearing (Li 76). The language itself is conversational, so students are exposed to more natural spoken English. There is also a scientific rationale behind this activity, in that language and musical processing are located in the same area of the brain (Maess & Koelsh, 2001) and that musical and linguistic syntax are processed similarly (Li 74). On top of vocabulary, grammar structure, culturally specific symbols, values, and meaning, students can learn natural rhythmic speech (Li 75).