Startups are generally considered to be new, technology-focused companies that are less than five years old. For the most part, they aim to disrupt industry with innovations, grow in terms of users and revenues and provide value to customers and shareholders.
It may not appear that startups have much in common with English Language Teaching (ELT), but there is, in fact, plenty to learn from startups and the way they work.
By understanding how startups think and looking at their best attributes, we can bring more creativity to our classrooms. Not only can we find new ways for our students to learn, collaborate and grow together, but we can also help our students develop much-needed leadership and critical thinking skills.
At its core, startup thinking is about problem-solving and growth. User-focused and data-driven, startup teams theorize, research, plan and test their products on new markets. Their strength is in their agility, being able to "pivot" quickly: change products, services and technology based on feedback from their customers.
They also operate on a number of key principles, all of which can be applied in the classroom:
Startups are entrepreneurial by definition. Their staff work in teams, but also have no problem going it alone, finding solutions and taking responsibility for new projects and initiatives. These are all excellent traits to encourage in the classroom as they will not only help your learners in an educational context, but in their professional lives too.
By learning to be accountable to themselves, measuring their own progress and seeing their achievements, autonomous learners develop self-confidence and progress faster as a result.
It’s therefore important to encourage students to take responsibility for their own learning. Rather than being solely reliant on their teacher, autonomous learners seek out ways to practice and improve their language skills in ways that appeal to them.
To do this, brainstorm strategies with your students to help them find ways to use English outside the classroom. They could, for example, keep a journal in English, watch English language films and take notes, read short stories or news articles, or even set their technology and social media language settings to English.
Startups have a common goal: to establish a business model and achieve a product-market fit. This goal focuses people’s attention and develops rapport among team members. As an additional benefit of working together, startuppers learn their own strengths and weaknesses and begin to collaborate with team members with complementary skills.
By learning about your students’ interests, objectives and needs, you can find inspiration to design relevant class projects. These give your students a common goal and the chance to collaborate effectively. What’s more, project work is rich in language learning opportunities and makes students accountable to one another. This in turn increases motivation and provides a genuine context for language learning.
Startups are not afraid to get things wrong. In fact, all entrepreneurs embrace mistakes, as they are part of coming to the right solution. As Thomas Edison once said "I have not failed 10,000 times – I’ve successfully found 10,000 ways that will not work." ?Some startups go as far as to reward and celebrate failure – saying that it’s a sign that a person is trying to succeed.
Encourage students to see mistakes as learning opportunities. Creating a safe space in the classroom where everyone is treated with respect and mistakes are viewed as natural learning experiences. This will help your students learn the language at their own pace, without fear of ridicule.
Startups are famous for focusing on growth and believing in improving their products. They see both negative and positive feedback as opportunities to grow. By always seeking to optimize their products and services, they improve the user experience and earn loyalty.
Similarly, it’s key to foster a growth mindset in your learners. ?A growth mindset perceives intelligence and ability as attributes to be developed, whereas a fixed mindset sees intelligence and ability as innate and unchanging.
Students with a growth mindset will therefore believe they can improve, be more motivated and see more progress as a result.
Startup founders mentor and support their team members when they face challenges, when they need to grow and when they are not reaching their potential. This increases the value of the workforce and enables them to be more productive.
Teachers are often already naturals at this. We know how important it is to offer support to our students, especially when they are feeling frustrated or disappointed with their progress. With our encouragement and support, our students can achieve things they never thought possible. So perhaps, in this final point, startup leaders could learn a thing or two from us.
多くの学生にとって、 英語 言語能力テストの世界をナビゲートすることは困難な経験になる可能性があります。大学進学の準備をしている場合でも、キャリアの見通しを高めようとしている場合でも、単にコミュニケーションスキルの向上を目指している場合でも、 Global Scale of English (GSE) スコアが何を意味するのかを理解することが重要です。
このブログ投稿では、 GSEを分解し、スコアが何を表しているかを説明し、スコアを改善するための実行可能な手順を提供します。
Katharine Scott is a teacher trainer and educational materials developer with over 20 years’ experience writing English language textbooks. She’s co-author of the 蜜桃app Primary course - English Code and is based in Spain. Katharine outlines a number of practical ways you can help English language learners develop key literacy skills.?
Teachers at all stages of education often complain about their students’ reading skills. The students are literate. In other words, they can interpret the graphemes, or letters on the page, into words. But they struggle to identify the purpose of a text or to analyze it in a meaningful way. We could say that the students have poor literacy skills.
Literacy is a term used to describe an active, critical form of reading. Some of the skills of a critical reader include:
A crucial literacy skill involves discerning whether a text is factually true or not. A critical reader always checks new information against existing knowledge. As we read, we have an internal dialogue: Where does that information come from? That’s impossible because ….???
This skill is essential for understanding many different types of texts from newspaper articles to scientific research.?
All pieces of text have a main purpose. This may be entertainment, in the case of a story or persuasion, in the case of advertising. A critical reader will know how to identify the purpose of the text.?
In the classroom, different types of text require different responses from the students. It’s important, as students grow older, that they know how to read and respond appropriately to a piece of written information.
This is an essential skill for summarizing information or following instructions. It is also important when we transform written information into something else, like a chart.
In many ways, literacy is the key skill that underpins learning at all stages. This may seem like an exaggeration, but consider the importance of the four skills outlined above.
Many teachers and parents of early learners instinctively develop literacy skills before the children can even read.?
When we read a story out loud to a child, we often ask questions about the narrative as we turn the pages: What is going to happen next? How do you think …. feels? Why is …? ?
These questions set the foundations for literacy.?
Too often, the comprehension questions that teachers ask about a text are mechanical. They ask the student to “lift” the information out of the text.
"Once upon a time, there was an island in the sea. One day, people were working in the fields. The sun was shining and there was one cloud in the sky. The cloud was a strange shape and moving towards the island. Soon the cloud was very big. Then a small boy looked up."?
Taken from English Code, Unit 4, p. 62
Typical comprehension questions based on the text would be:
These questions do not really reflect on the meaning of the text and do not lead to a critical analysis. While these simple questions are a good checking mechanism, they don’t help develop literacy skills.
If we want to develop critical readers, we need to incorporate a critical analysis of reading texts into class work through a deep reading comprehension. We can organize the comprehension into three types.
Comprehension at “text level” is about exploring the meaning of individual words and phrases in a text. Examples for the text above could be:
Other text-level activities include:
Comprehension “between the lines” means speculating and making guesses with the information we already have from the text. This type of literacy activity often involves lots of questions and discussions with the students. You should encourage students to give good reasons for their opinions. An example for the text above could be:
Other “Between the lines” activities include:
Literacy activities are not only based on fiction. We need to help students be critical readers of all sorts of texts. The text below is factual and informative:
"Ice hockey players should be very good skaters. They always have good balance. They change direction very quickly and they shouldn't fall over. Players should also have fast reactions because the puck moves very quickly."?
Taken from English Code, Level 4, p. 96
“Between the lines” activities for this text could be:
Comprehension “behind the lines” is about the information we, the readers, already have. Our previous knowledge, our age, our social background and many other aspects change the way we understand and interpret a text.?
An example for the text above could be:
Sometimes a lack of socio-cultural knowledge can lead to misunderstanding. Look at the text below.?
Is the relationship between Ms Turner and Jack Roberts formal or informal?
73 Highlands Road Oxbo, Wisconsin 54552
April 11th
Dear Ms. Tamer,
Some people want to destroy the forest and build an airport. This forest is a habitat for many wolves. If they destroy the forest, the wolves will leave the forest. If the wolves leave the forest, there will be more rabbits. This won't be good for our forest.
Please build the airport in a different place. Please don't destroy the forest.
Kind regards, Jack Robers
Taken from English code, Level 4, unit 5, Writing Lab
If your students are unaware of the convention of using Dear to start a letter in English, they may not answer this question correctly.?
Other “Behind the lines” literacy activities include:
Examples:
From the activities above, it’s clear that a literacy scheme develops more than reading skills. As students speculate and give their opinions, they talk and listen to each other.?
A literacy scheme can also develop writing skills. The text analysis gives students a model to follow in their writing. In addition, a literacy scheme works on higher-order thinking skills such as analysis, deduction and summary.
Developing literacy skills so that students become active, critical readers should be a key part of educational programs at all ages. Literacy activities based on a reading text can be especially useful for the foreign language class.?
With literacy activities, we can encourage students:
More crucially, we are developing critical readers for the future.
相互接続された今日の世界では、 英語 での効果的なコミュニケーションがこれまで以上に重要になっています。教育者や言語学习者が 英語 習熟度を測定し、向上させようとする中で、 Global Scale of English (GSE) のようなリソースは評価のための貴重なフレームワークを提供します。このブログ記事では、 GSE を使用してリスニングスキルを評価する方法を探り、指導の調整と言語開発のサポートにどのように役立つかについての洞察を提供します。
リスニングスキルについては、この GSE 、学习者がさまざまな文脈で話し言葉 英語 をどれだけ理解できるかに焦点を当てています。これは、さまざまな複雑さのレベルで理解度を評価します。
简単な情报を理解する: 低いレベルでは、学习者は簡単な指示や日常的なトピックなどの基本的な情報を理解することが期待されます。この GSE は、学习者が重要な詳細をどれだけうまく把握できるかについての 学习目标 を提供します。
主要なアイデアを理解する: 習熟度が上がるにつれて、学习者は会話や放送など、より複雑な話し言葉のテキストで主要なアイデアと重要なポイントを特定できるはずです。この GSE では、学习者がさまざまなソースから重要な情報をどれだけうまく抽出できるかを概説しています。
详细な情报を理解する:上級レベルでは、学习者は暗黙の意味や話し手の意図など、詳細で微妙な情報を理解することが期待されます。この GSE では、これらの段階で必要な詳細度と理解の深さについて説明しています。
また、この GSE では、グローバルな理解、情報の認識、特定の情報の識別、情報の抽出など、生徒がリスニングのさまざまな操作にどのように取り組んでいるかを示しています。これを考慮に入れることで、教師は生徒の進捗状況を監視し、リスニングスキルを評価できます。これを実際に実行する例を挙げます。
たとえば、 GSE 30-35 ( CEFRの A2 が低いレベルに相当) を考え、学生が情報をどのように処理するかに焦点を当ててみましょう。リスニング活動をチェックするとき、単に答えが正しいか間違っているかに焦点を当てるのではなく、 GSE を使用して学习者を分析し、彼らがどのような進歩を遂げているか、そして彼らが前進するために教師として何をする必要があるかを確認できます。方法は次のとおりです。
