Twelve ideas to maximize impact on students’ language learning

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Moscow State Academic Art Institute named after V.I. Surikov, Moscow, Russia

Research article

Twelve ideas to maximize impact on students' language learning

Bogomolova I.I.

Аннотация

МГАХИ им. В.И.Сурикова, Москва, Россия

Научная статья

Двенадцать способов повышения эффективности обучения иностранным языкам

Богомолова И.И.

Данная статья рассматривает важные вопросы современного образования: как улучшить результаты обучения студентов, что и в какой степени влияет на успехи студентов в учебе, как сделать процесс обучения наиболее действенным и привести наибольшее количество студентов к высоким учебным результатам? Рассматривается влияние на результаты обучения личностей студента и преподавателя, их рабочие взаимоотношения, а также используемые методы преподавания. Автором предлагаются двенадцать способов (идей) повышения эффективности обучения иностранным языкам в нефилологическом вузе.

Ключевые слова: эффективность обучения, стратегия преподавания, учебные методы, иностранные языки, текст, синонимы, задания, вопросы, перевод, языковая структура.

Abstract

education teaching language

TWELVE IDEAS TO MAXIMIZE IMPACT ON STUDENTS' LANGUAGE LEARNING

Research article

Bogomolova I.I. *

Moscow State Academic Art Institute named after V.I. Surikov, Moscow, Russia

The article covers the salient issues of modern education: what is the best way to improve students' progress, what factors influence the students' achievements in learning, how to make education process more efficient resulted in greater learning success of more number of students? The paper focuses on individual features of a student and a teacher, their working relationships, and education methods used in teaching. The author proposes twelve ways (“ideas”) to enhance foreign language teaching efficiency in a non-philological institute of higher education.

Key words: teaching efficiency, teaching strategies, education methods, foreign languages, text, synonyms, assignments, questions, translation, interpretation, language structure.

While efforts are made to maximize education efficiency, which is often considered as an increase in students' points for all kinds of tests, it is getting more and more important to find new teaching strategies than can positively and profoundly influence it. And exactly these teaching strategies are covered in this article. The good news is that a lot of research studies have been conducted lately, and their results highlight what issues we shall address and consider as professionals in contemporary English teaching, how we shall enhance education impact and make it visible. The subject of impact was inspired with research study by John Hattie, the scientist from New Zealand.

In my article I would like to review the basic provisions given in John Hattie's research, which contribute in conception of modern education as activities based on positive relations between a teacher and a student. The foundation stone of these relations is faith in teacher, confidence in right direction and goal, transparent coordination with students to improve their progress, language skills and to find best strategy to achieve short-run and long-range objectives. According to Professor Hattie “biggest effect on student learning occurs when teachers become learners of their own learning, and when students become their own teacher.” [1, P. 75]. The New Zealand scientist developed a list of most profound and considerable factors and estimated how strong each of them influences students' achievements. He presented his findings as a rating with detailed description of each factor and its function in the education process. At practice level, such approach requires regular reassessment of existing methods and activities, and their integration and updates in the foreign language classroom.

In my paper I will scrutinize some activities that require moderate skills, meet standards of training aids available in today's classrooms and covered in modern textbooks. In particular, we will analyze how to train an impactful class, to start the process, to build up efficient sequence of lessons and to evaluate their influence on the students. The message is about absorbing the content given in the best textbooks. You will make sure that the proposed methods can be applied and adapted with minimum efforts and maximum effects.

In order to implement it in your classroom, “students [and adults] have to know what they are learning, why they are learning it, how they will know they have learned it, and what it means to have learned.” [1, P. 156]. To achieve it, every day teachers make good use of learning progress marks and efficiency grades. Learning progress marks and efficiency grades considerably improve transparency of teacher's activities. Based on John Hattie's research study, it can greatly intensify effectiveness of teaching the students. In this paper I propose 12 tips (ideas) how to visualize the teaching process with your students.

How To Begin A Class With More Impact

Idea 1. Get them to notice more language

Select one or two examples of the target structure - use one of the exercises or input texts in the upcoming unit in your course book. Devise a very short warm-up activity around this structure to make students aware of a likely gap in their linguistic competence; this could be a micro-translation task, or any kind of noticing tasks, such as noting collocations or phrase patterns (= colligations), thinking up synonyms, writing example sentences, etc.

Idea 2. Make them grasp target vocabulary or structure(s)

Use the audio recording of an input text. With their books closed, students listen to the input text and

1. a) put down as many examples of the target language (words or phrases) as they can, or - with stronger groups -

2. b) try to predict what the target structure is going to be.

Idea 3. Focus them instantly

As students enter the class, give them an opening question concerning today's target language - on the board or on sheets of paper.

Idea 4. Start from the end

Use one of the language wrap-up or revision exercises from the end of the unit to start students off when you begin working on that unit; insist that they record their scores and keep them for their own reference till the end of the unit (see Idea 11 below).

How To Teach Language With More Impact

Idea 5. Put language into text

Translate (a segment of) input text into Russian and give it to your students to translate back into English. Note: they do not actually need to write up the whole thing but rather look at the source text and underline or circle the bits that they would need to look up. Then let them see the original text in their books and find the equivalents of the difficult or new bits of language.

Idea 6. Exploit comprehension work

Make sure that comprehension questions actually test deep rather than superficial understanding - to do that, such questions should involve paraphrases or synonyms of the original language in the input text. If needed, devise alternative comprehension questions and/or - even better - get your students to do this for each other.

Idea 7. Shorten the text

Get your students to delete as many words or phrases from the input text as possible, without seriously affecting the original meaning - and making sure, of course, that the resulting version stays grammatical.

Idea 8. Summarize the text

Get you students to summarize (a section of) the input text in English (with a specific word-limit, if you feel they'll cope with the added challenge). Alternatively, they can summarize the text, or make brief notes on each paragraph. You can also ask them to compose a subtitle (and or paragraph titles).

Idea 9. Change the text

Make your students change the wording of the input text without altering the basic story or meaning. They can use synonyms or paraphrases, or add something as appropriate. Your students may be focused on a given (type of) structure, e.g. tenses, or they can add or change things as they please.

A great variation on this sort of activity is Synonyms Race: in pairs or groups of three, students attempt to find synonyms for as many items in the input text as they possibly can.

How To Evaluate Impact

Idea 10. Repeat tasks

Towards the end of a unit, get students to do one or two of the revision exercises that you used as your class openers (Idea 4 above). Encourage students to compare their scores at the beginning and at the end of the unit.

Idea 11. Low-stake testing

Offer alternatives to traditional (high-stake) testing formats, to encourage peer collaboration, build confidence and foster good relationships with your learners. Such alternatives could include:

· doing a test in pairs (and sharing the grade afterwards);

· doing a test at home;

· doing a test with course books or notebooks open.

Idea 12. From a test taker to a test maker

As an alternative form of revision, encourage your students to write test items themselves - and make use of them in subsequent classes (less work for you). Such tests could be made for another student or group of students, or even for the teacher.

To conclude with, I would say that it is nice to know and feel that your students are pleased with your lesson and the activities they are engaged during it. But “pleased” is not enough for us. You shall know teaching impact level and progress visibility level achieved during the lesson. For this purpose analyze the goals and tasks of the lesson, as well as the students' knowledge of what they did and why they did it. Ask the students about how important obtained knowledge was for practical usage and further improvement of language skills. This is both the most challenging and rewarding issue.

Список литературы / References

1. Hattie J. C. Visible Learning for Teachers : Maximizing Impact on Learning / J. C. Hattie. - London : Routledge, 2012. - 286 p.

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