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Elevator to the future: English skills

“Would it be safer to take the stairs?”

The question came to mind in Montreal last week when I visited a 1929 apartment building and came face-to-face with its equally ancient caged elevator. An elderly woman shooed me inside the polished brass and oak confection and, as we ascended, confided that there was still an elevator operator when she first moved into the building.

Ah, an elevator operator – it’s a career and skill set we’ve almost forgotten. But just as hard as it is for us to imagine doing a job that only involves opening and closing doors and pressing buttons, an elevator operator from 50 years ago would find it impossible to imagine much of today’s work. And, in turn, we may not be able to imagine the jobs our students will have in the coming years. Fortunately, imagining the education that will take our students there is less difficult.

To educate today’s students, we should heed the advice of Ali ibn Abi Talib (599-661 CE): “Do not raise your children the way your parents raised you; they were born for a different time”.

Today’s students are different in five key ways: visual learning, collaboration, critical and creative thinking, digital involvement, and control of their learning.

1. Developing visual literacy

Today’s learners grew up with the rich multimedia of computers and are used to exploring ideas independently. They’re less dependent on teachers for the information they want, and often find it in surprising ways. For example, avoiding dictionary definitions and instead doing image searches to understand new words.

What you can do

Develop students’ visual literacy. Do they know the differences between bar charts, pie charts and Gantt charts? Can they interpret the data in line graphs and Venn diagrams? Can they apply what they know to present and explain ideas in dynamic ways? Expose students to a range of visual formats, from illustrations to diagrams, and give them tasks where they have to use them.

2. Encouraging collaboration

Schools were traditionally organized around competition, aimed at separating the most able students from the least able. But teachers today can’t ignore those who seem less able; we need to be more like doctors, devoting the greater part of our time and resources to those who need it most. Our aim should be to bring everyone up to the same level.

What you can do

Collaboration involves offering more tasks where students can help each other, particularly getting more able and less able students to work together to benefit from peer teaching. More able students may resist, but remind them that one who teaches learns twice.

3. Facilitating critical and creative thinking

Critical thinking has become far more important than schools’ traditional focus on memorization. Employers expect that students will become problem solvers. Gone is the factory model of employees doing repetitive jobs; those are now more efficiently and effectively done by machines.

What you can do

Traditionally, teachers have asked questions for which they know the answer and for which there is only one answer. Try to ask more open-ended questions for which there may be multiple answers. Ask questions to which you don’t know the answer. Encourage creativity. Ask students to brainstorm, and then use analytical skills to determine the best answers.

4. Leveraging the digital environment

Today’s students are digital natives. They first learned to type on digital keyboards and, since then, have embraced phones as a key resource. English writer Samuel Johnson (1709-1784) said there were two kinds of knowledge: knowing a thing or knowing where to find it. For today’s students, finding information has never been easier.

What you can do

Many teachers dread phones in the classroom, but they are powerful computers that let students connect to online learning resources and learn what they want, when, and where they want. Steer students toward using their phones to improve their English but also teach them to be reflective about the sources of the information they choose to use.

5. Offering autonomy

Today’s students are too often referred to as clients, suggesting that the teacher-student relationship is no more than a business arrangement. It’s wrong to think so but, at the same time, we recognize that today’s students are savvy about assessing what they need to learn and how they would prefer to learn it. They have grown up with ideas about multiple intelligences (Gardner, 1993).

What you can do

Open a dialog with your students to see if they have learning preferences and whether these preferences can be accommodated in the classroom. Give more individual projects letting students choose topics based on their needs and interests.

Even among elevator operators, there were those who were better or worse at their jobs. Perhaps the greatest skill for students today is a sense that they need to take responsibility and examine the needs of any task or career that interests them, and figure out how to learn the skills that will get them there.

Let’s examine four of the most common challenges secondary teachers have and look into some strategies to help solve them.

1. My students are afraid of making mistakes

You’re not alone! Many teachers say their teenage students are quiet and unwilling to answer questions in class. Sometimes, this might simply be because they don’t know the answers, but more often than not, they are nervous about making mistakes.

When children grow into teenagers, they tend to become more self-conscious and worried about what their peers think of them – and making mistakes in public is a big no-no for them. However, there are several ways to facilitate a safe learning environment where your students are happy and willing to talk. Sometimes, though, it takes a little experimentation. Here are some things you can try:

Celebrate mistakes

When students make mistakes, ensure that you praise them for taking a risk or making an effort. Correct their errors and be clear with the rest of the class that the only way to learn is to try new things.

Be firm

Don’t tolerate any bullying or laughing when someone gets an answer wrong. If your students fear that others will mock them for their efforts, they’ll stay quiet. So make sure you have clear rules and that your students understand that mistakes are normal and to be expected.

Have students discuss their answers in pairs or groups

If your students are painfully shy and afraid of making mistakes, avoid picking on individuals to answer questions in front of the class. Instead, when asking a question, tell your students to discuss it in pairs or small groups first. This will allow them to formulate their ideas and feel more confident. Afterwards, you can ask the pairs to share what they discussed – leading to a natural open-class discussion.

Listen to your students

Another, powerful way of engaging your students in discussion is to listen to a conversation they are having with their partners and then express how impressed you are with their ideas during a feedback session. E.g. “You said X, which I thought was very interesting. Could you explain this to the class? It was a great idea.” This gives them the confidence to share their thoughts.

2. My students are not engaged with the activities I choose

This is another very common problem for teachers of teenagers. You spend a lot of time thinking of fun, interesting activities – then, when you present them to the class, your students look away and say they’re bored. Soon enough, you’ll get frustrated and not know how to re-engage them. Here are some ideas to help:

Get to know your students

Without fail, the best way to engage your students is by getting to know them as individuals over the year. Find out about their hobbies and interests outside of school, and learn what makes them laugh and what worries them. Use your knowledge of your students to find interesting books to read, videos to watch, or relevant subjects to discuss. This way, you’ll deliver tailored lessons your students find truly interesting and useful.

Allow a degree of autonomy

Sometimes quietness is also a sign of disengagement with the learning materials. To get past this obstacle, you can get your students to brainstorm things that interest them in groups, list them on the board and have a class vote on the topic of their next class project. As a teacher, you always have the power to veto inappropriate ideas, but giving students a voice is a powerful way of making them feel valued and involved in their own education.

Make things (a little) competitive

Even teenagers love games! And play is an integral part of learning, as it allows our students to be themselves, have fun, and communicate freely at the same time. By allowing them to play language-focused games in class, they’ll soon forget their inhibitions and start talking.

3. My students just want to do grammar exercises

Language is all about communication, speaking, listening, reading and writing – yet all your students want to do is grammar exercises. Frustrating as this is, it’s probably a sign that our students are not confident in their speaking or listening abilities. Here’s what you can do:

Encourage free language practice

Grammar activities are very structured and there is often a clear answer. Day-to-day communications, however, are much freer, which can intimidate less confident students. This activity will help you combine the two aspects of language learning:

• Put students in small groups and give them a set of cards with exciting topics printed on them—for example; music, sports, environment, school, vacations, friends, food.
• Tell students that they should each choose a card and speak freely about their topic for 30 seconds – the short time will help them overcome their fear of speaking and can be gradually increased as they get used to this type of activity.
• Have students record themselves when they are speaking and then, when they listen back, have them identify the grammatical structures they used.

They should write down and correct any mistakes under your guidance. Not only will this get students used to talking and encourage a lot of emergent language, but it will also help them feel they are practicing grammar.

If your students really enjoy learning grammar, you can ‘flip’ your grammar activities and make them more communicative. First, provide them with a series of sentences or listening clips which have a common grammatical structure (second conditional sentences, for example).

Then have students work together (in English) to identify how the language is structured, so they can discover the grammar point for themselves. This not only gets them talking, but they are doing something they feel confident at.

4. My students are bored of all the repetition

Repetition is an important part of language learning. By practicing things over and over again, your students will come to understand it better and will be able to produce the language more easily. However, repetition is often quite dull, especially for fast learners. Here’s how you can make things more interesting for your teenage students:

Use a greater variety of activities to engage your learners

If you’ve been teaching your students a particular set of vocabulary, a grammatical structure, or some pronunciation rules, think about how else they can practice them.

For example, instead of drilling pronunciation over and over again, ask students to think of all the words they can think of that have the same sound in them (e.g. book, look, cook, shook, etc.). This will help them ‘hear’ the sounds in their heads and improve their understanding of other words.

If you have been learning vocabulary through reading, have students write or tell stories that incorporate the words.

The idea is not to stop repeating the target language or skill, but to practice it in different ways. Apply this principle to other areas of language learning so your students won’t feel like they are repeating things.

Reading in English can be one of the most challenging activities for young learners and teenagers, especially when they don’t get much enjoyment from reading in their own language.

These four reading strategies are fun, high-energy, and educational ways of getting even the most reluctant students involved in your reading lessons.

1. Bring outside interests into the classroom

Many students find it hard to get enthused by the reading texts used in their classrooms; they might feature complex vocabulary, be too generic, or just not resonate with their interests. An effective way of reaching out to the more reluctant readers in the class is to use reading materials related to the media they enjoy engaging with in their leisure time.

����app’s Marvel series of graded readers provides an ideal opportunity for bringing popular movie culture into your learners’ reading skills development. All of the readers are designed specifically for use in the classroom and feature an integrated skills approach that reinforces vocabulary and helps develop language skills. The readers come with activities to complete throughout the book rather than at the end, and key vocabulary is highlighted and defined.

Excitingly, most of our readers come with downloadable audio files (MP3s), so the students can listen along and hear the stories come to life. The audio can help students model pronunciation, get used to different accents and dialects, and make it even more accessible for students who are still less keen on reading.

2. Gamify the reading experience

By adding simple game dynamics and mechanics to your reading activities, you can add a competitive and fun element to your classes. This could help maintain the interest of learners who might otherwise lose enthusiasm.

The “dictogloss” activity is a good way of adding that extra element as it uses a countdown timer and peer-to-peer interaction to make the reading more of a competitive game.

First, find a good level and age-appropriate story for your students. Before you begin reading the story, tell your students to pay close attention because they are going to re-tell it themselves later.

You will need to read the story to the students in an engaging way, occasionally stopping, and asking students what they think will happen next.

Afterwards, allow the students five minutes to write as much of the story as they can remember in their notebooks.

When time is up, put the students in pairs and allow them to compare stories and correct each other, combining their stories, so they have a complete version. Help students by writing key vocabulary on the board as they request it.

Finally, hand out the original story for students to compare. Get feedback to find out what new vocabulary they have learned and help them make corrections in their stories where needed.

3. Experiment with high-energy activities

Reading doesn’t have to be a sedentary activity. Make use of the classroom space and use movement as a way to motivate and engage your students.

Add a dash of physical activity to your reading task by turning it into a running dictation competition. At the same time, they will practice a whole range of skills; reading, listening, pronunciation, and writing.

Before the class, stick some level-appropriate reading materials to a classroom wall; ideally, you should space it out well and have one reading sheet for every two to four students (the material should be identical).

Put your students into pairs and tell them they are going to have a reading race. Nominate one student to write and another student to dictate.

Students who are writing must sit at a table on the opposite side of the room to the reading material. Students who are dictating must go to the text on the wall, memorize as much of the text as possible, come back to the writer and dictate what they can remember.

Pairs must write as much as they can in four minutes, and when you get halfway through the activity, students should swap roles.

Finally, ask the students to swap their papers and listen to your dictation, making corrections and asking questions as they go. The pair with the longest text and fewest errors is the winner!

4. Go beyond the text

Taking a text and making it into something entirely original can also be a powerful motivator for creative students. Those who complain that reading is boring or too hard will have an extra reason to get through a story if there’s a promise of creative fun at the end of the task.

Tell students that once they have finished reading, they must re-imagine the story and characters and adapt it for a radio show, complete with sound effects, music and scripts.

Depending on how creative your students are feeling, they could write a sequel or a prequel, or adapt the existing story – ideal if you’re using a superhero reader from the Marvel series.

They will need to review vocabulary and pronunciation, remember the details of the original story, explain the characters and their motivations, and plot and write their own scripts. Students can find sound effects on YouTube and record the whole thing on their mobile phones, or a school computer.

By turning a book into a creative project, not only can you motivate students to read, but you will reinforce vocabulary, pronunciation and have a lot of fun doing it.