English Australia Journal English Australia J o u r n a l the Australian journal of English language teaching VOLUME 32 - 02
In this issue… ARTICLES Book Club Café: a new recipe for extensive reading Using debates as an engaging assessment task in Academic English courses
INTERVIEW Ten questons for Lindsay Clandfeld
REVIEWS Penny Ur’s 100 Teaching Tips English Australia Academic Culture Level 3, 162 Goulburn Street Surry Hills NSW 2010 The Round Minis PO Box 1437, Darlinghurst NSW 1300 AUSTRALIA …more artcles www.englishaustralia.com.au and reviews inside
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English Australia represents over 120 member colleges throughout Australia that provide VOLUME 32 - 02 quality English language programs to students and professionals from around the world. As an associaton, English Australia has a focus on representng colleges whose core business is English language teaching, providing best practce support and expertse to member colleges and promotng the English language sector with global visionary leadership. English Australia Journal the Australian journal of English language teaching
A TESOL publicaton of English Australia Ltd
Volume 32 Number 2
2017
ISSN 1444-4496
English Australia ABN 86 003 959 037 Views expressed in articles and reviews are those of the author(s), and not necessarily shared by English Australia, the editorial team, or the Editorial Advisory Committee. Every effort has been made to trace the owners of copyright material in this issue, but notification of any errors or omissions is welcomed, and will be rectified at the earliest opportunity. All articles and reviews appearing in this issue are copyright of the English Australia Journal and may not be reproduced without permission.
Cover image courtesy of English Australia member college Navitas English, Darwin CONTENTS
EDITORIAL 1 PEER-REVIEWED ARTICLES Lesley Speer & Jose Lara 3 Book Club Café: A new recipe for extensive reading James Pengelley & Jane Pyper 17 School in the cloud, feet on the ground: Language learning with SOLE Anthony Catto & Anne Burns 34 Experiencing Thai Student Voice from a teacher's perspective
BRIEF REPORTS Elaheh Gharesoufloo An analysis of perceptons: Writng task designers in an English for Academic Purposes (EAP) program and a specifc academic discipline 51
CLASSROOM TALK Karen McRae Using debates as an engaging assessment task in Academic English courses 57 Laurel Acton Helping students to form and express opinions 62 Gerhard Erasmus Exploring academic articles with lower level students 67
Interview: Lindsay Clandfield Ten Questions for Lindsay Clandfield 71
REVIEWS 100 Activities for Fast Finishers 76 Rachael Harris Reviewed by Bridgid Seymour-East
Volume 32 No 2 English Australia Journal III The Cambridge Guide to Blended Learning for Language Teaching 79 Michael McCarthy (Ed.) Reviewed by Vanessa Todd The Round ‘Minis’ Series Richer Speaking by Sandy Millin 82 Reviewed by Finlay McCall
Logic Activities by David Boughton 83 Reviewed by Gloria Del’amore Moreira
Moral Dilemmas by Lindsay Clandfield 84 Reviewed by Rigert Van Eeden
Brainstorming by Gerhard Erasmus & Hall Houston 85 Reviewed by Hayley Crawford
Energising EAP by Meredith MacAulay 86 Reviewed by Richard Ingold Get Ready for IELTS 87 Fiona Aish, Jane Short, Rhona Snelling, Jo Tomlinson, & Els Van Geyte Reviewed by Melissa Reed A Practical Introduction to Teacher Training in ELT 90 John Hughes Reviewed by Sophia Khan Penny Ur’s 100 Teaching Tips 93 Penny ur Reviewed by Walter Slamer Academic Culture 96 Jean Brick, Maria Herke & Deanna Wong Reviewed by Janice Ford Elements of Success 4 99 Anne M. Ediger, Jennie Currie Santamaria & Randee Falk Reviewed by Meredith MacAulay
GENERAL INFORMATION 102 English Australia Member Colleges 104
English Australia Journal Subscriptions 108
English Australia Journal Advertising 109
IV English Australia Journal Volume 32 No 2 ENGLISH AUSTRALIA JOURNAL
Executive Editor Philip Chappell Department of Linguistcs, Macquarie University Classroom Talk Editor Sophia Khan Britsh Council, Singapore Reviews Editor Richard Ingold Navitas English, Sydney
Editorial Advisory Board Phil Benson Department of Linguistcs, Macquarie University Anne Burns School of Educaton, University of New South Wales Jill Burton School of Educaton, University of South Australia John Macalister School of Linguistcs and Applied Language Studies, Victoria University of Wellington Brian Paltridge Faculty of Educaton and Social Work, University of Sydney David Prescott Department of English, The American University of Sharjah Jack Richards Faculty of Educaton and Social Work, University of Sydney Steven Tait Britsh Council, Malaysia Scott Thornbury The New School, New York Lynda Yates Department of Linguistcs, Macquarie University
Volume 32 No 2 English Australia Journal V 16PTE07_EAJ_205Hx130Wmm_AD_BW_OL.indd 1 11/03/2016 9:29 AM
VI English Australia Journal Volume 32 No 2 EDITORIAL
Welcome to the first 2017 issue of the English Australia Journal. And also welcome to Richard Ingold, who joins the editorial team as Reviews Editor. Richard replaces Tamzen Armer, who has carried out the role with superb efficiency and aplomb for the past four years. Richard has settled into the role quickly, and I’m sure you’ll agree that he has provided us with an excellent range of reviews for this issue. We also have a fascinating range of articles in the peer-reviewed section. Jose Lara and Lesley Speers report on their extensive reading project, which was based on the principles of exploratory practice. The outcome was the ‘Book Club Café’, which is potentially relevant for many readers. James Pengelley and Jayne Piper provide a critique of Sugata Mitra’s controversial self-organised learning environments (SOLE) project before presenting their action research project, in which they applied SOLE to their ELT setting in Hong Kong. Finally, Anthony Catto and Anne Burns present their research project on utilising the notion of ‘student voice’ to explore the student experience from the students’ perspectives as a means of supporting teacher professional development. The study was carried out in an EFL setting, Thailand, and I am sure readers will agree that the methodology could be applied to their setting, too. We have a new section of the Journal starting this issue. Named ‘Brief Reports’, it is an opportunity for researchers and teachers to showcase their work in a short article, while at the same time maintaining the rigour of peer-review. Elaheh Gharesoufloo is our first contributor, sharing with us her research on the perspectives of task designers for academic writing tasks in EAP and academic discipline contexts. In Classroom Talk, Karen McRae offers readers a way to use debates as assessment tasks in Academic English courses; Laurel Acton presents some findings from her action research into supporting her EAP students in expressing their opinions; and Gerhard Erasmus explores how we can make it possible for low level students to engage with academic, discipline-specific articles. Lindsay Clandfield, an award-winning writer, teacher, teacher trainer and international
Volume 32 No 2 English Australia Journal 1 speaker is our guest for Sophia Khan’s Ten Questions section. Get the inside scoop on Lindsay, a self-confessed ‘tech geek’ who is also critical of technology in our field. Lindsay will be a plenary speaker at the 2017 English Australia Conference in September in Adelaide – you will have a chance to meet him then, so treat this as your conversation starter. Finally, Richard Ingold serves up a smorgasbord of materials reviews by teachers. Get the heads up on resources that can help you with applying blended learning, keeping ‘fast finisher’ students busy, preparing your language students for the academic culture of university, and much more. We hope that you enjoy the latest issue of the Journal and that you will consider contributing to one of the sections in the future. Research Articles are reviewed by at least two scholars in the relevant area. Classroom Talk articles and Reviews are also reviewed by the Editorial Team. Many thanks to our external reviewers – specialists in the content areas of the articles – for giving up their valuable time to read and comment on the articles in order to ensure the highest possible standards. We were fortunate in this issue to have international scholars of high repute reviewing the articles. Finally, as always, our thanks and appreciation to Derek Trow, who works in the ‘back office’ ensuring we have a high quality design, and that the printed version rolls off the presses in top shape. Thanks also to the English Australia Secretariat for their ongoing support, and to the Editorial Board for reviewing and advising.
Phil Chappell Executive Editor [email protected]
Sophia Khan Classroom Talk Editor [email protected]
Richard Ingold Reviews Editor [email protected]
2 English Australia Journal Volume 32 No 2 Book Club Café: A new recipe for extensive reading
Lesley Speer
Jose Lara Macquarie University English Language Centre
Introducing and sustaining an Extensive Reading program can be challenging for teachers and for language centres. Generally, whilst it is impractical to devote a great deal of the limited time during class to ‘free reading’, motivating students to read in their own time can be especially difficult. Introducing a reading program can also involve considerable costs and a substantial commitment of time for language centres. This paper describes the introduction of ‘Book Club Café’, an innovative Extensive Reading project, and its implementation through three phases at a university English language centre in Sydney. A practical but flexible model is provided for teachers who wish to implement such a program in their own teaching contexts. Finally, data is provided from an Exploratory Practice study which was conducted on the project in 2015 and which indicates that the program is successful and sustainable over time.
Introduction With its alternative titles of reading for pleasure, free reading and voluntary reading, extensive reading (ER) is generally defined as an activity whereby students engage in a large amount of reading at an easily comprehensible level with the purpose of improving vocabulary range and knowledge of structure, whilst acquiring a habit of reading for enjoyment (Bamford and Day, 2002). The authors, two teachers at a university language centre in Sydney (herein referred to as the Centre), were aware that despite best practice in teaching methodologies, excellent coursebooks and customised teaching materials, a structured ER program in English would provide considerable added benefits to the students (Robb & Kano, 2013). To encourage extra reading, the Centre had already purchased a wide range of graded readers, which were available for students to borrow, and teachers often provided follow-up activities in class, based around comprehension questions. This approach, which is probably familiar to most English language teachers, was only moderately successful,
Volume 32 No 2 English Australia Journal 3 as many students simply did not read the books. It became clear that a significant percentage of students were reluctant readers, even in their first language. An additional problem was that most students did not understand the value of reading in developing their language skills, and saw additional reading as an unnecessary task, or as extra homework which did not capture their interest. The Book Club Café project evolved from a search to find better ways to motivate students to read, thereby improving not only their reading skills but also their overall language ability, and ideally to help them to develop a habit of reading.
Rationale The benefits of ER are well documented (Day & Robb, 2015; Grabe & Stoller, 2011; Nation, 1997; Robb & Kano, 2013). The more students read, the more vocabulary and grammatical structures they are exposed to. Beyond simply improving reading fluency, extensive reading can also entertain, amuse and inform students so that they will develop a wider general knowledge and will improve their ability to think critically. The concept of ER is not new, and graded readers were published as early as the 1920s for learners of English as a second language (West, 1926), yet many teachers still focus only on developing language through intensive reading activities, using texts which have been chosen by the teacher. The authors believe that there is a need in any language program for both intensive and extensive reading, because students need an opportunity to practice those skills they have acquired in class. Krashen (1988, p. 269) posed the question, ‘Do we learn to read by reading?’ and his research into ‘free’ reading suggests a strong positive correlation between the amount of reading and the reader’s language development; however, teachers and researchers have continued to look for further evidence that this correlation exists. ER has gained greater popularity in the last two decades as more teachers have implemented programs and researchers continue to explore the relationship between reading and language development. Waring (2009) argues that ‘learners need to gain their own sense of language, and this cannot be gained from only learning discrete language points, rather it must, and can only, come from massive exposure in tandem with course books.’ This supports the authors’ belief that intensive reading is not enough. Bamford and Day's (2002) principles have provided a blueprint for the introduction of many Extensive Reading projects. The 10 principles define a type of reading where quantity is important; students are encouraged to read as much as possible and they should be able to select material which interests them and which is also easy, so that they can read quickly and develop greater fluency. The ultimate purpose of ER is to cultivate in students a love for reading, in the hope that they will be motivated to keep studying English. However, the practical difficulties of acquiring enough
4 English Australia Journal Volume 32 No 2 suitable reading material and maintaining student interest in an effective ER program are also well known to teachers who have tried to implement and manage such a project (Robb & Kano, 2013). In 2014, the authors decided to introduce an Extensive Reading program at the Centre following Bamford and Day's (2002) principles, but with a model which would hopefully avoid some of the traditional problems.
Methodology The Book Club Café program was introduced in just two classes in 2014, but as other teachers at the Centre became interested, the decision was made to expand the project. To gain a deeper understanding, and to measure the success of the program, an Exploratory Practice study was conducted in 2015 over 25 weeks, following the model developed by Allwright (2005). His model of Exploratory Practice (EP) provides an alternative to ‘academic’ research by providing teachers with the tools to observe and reflect on what happens in their own classrooms. The EP study had six components: • Pre-questonnaires for students, to determine reading frequency, habits and attude. • Observatons of in-class Book Club Café follow- up sessions. • Recording of data, i.e. the number of words and texts which students read. • Weekly journal entries to record teacher observatons. • Post-questonnaires for students to refect on the program and provide feedback. • Meetngs with teachers at the end of each teaching block to refect and decide on changes to the program.
Phases The language courses at the Centre are delivered in five-week blocks, with some students staying for fewer than five weeks and others staying for up to 40 or more. Before embarking on the first phase of the project at the Centre, it was decided to measure the amount of reading that the students were doing, by surveying, over two blocks (10 weeks), a total of 225 respondents from General English and Academic English classes as they enrolled in their first class at the Centre (Figure 1). Students were required to state how often they read something and were also asked some open-ended questions about their attitude towards reading. It was stressed that participation in the Book Club café project was voluntary and questionnaires were distributed during Week One to all new students during class when the reading project was introduced.
Volume 32 No 2 English Australia Journal 5 This survey indicated that approximately 75% of General English students and more than 50% of Academic English students were reading once a month or less, in addition to what was set as compulsory homework (Figure 1). From the questionnaire, it also became evident that students generally did not understand the importance of reading or its impact on their language development. Many reported that they disliked reading both in English and in their first language and a common theme which emerged was that students often did not enjoy reading anything which was obligatory.
Voluntary reading in English ( )
General English Academic English 43.77 36.8 31.09 23.67 17.11 15.37 11.06 5.78 7.05 8.3
Every day Two or three tmes Once a week Once a month Almost never a week
Figure 1. Voluntary reading in English done by students (prior to Book Club Café)
Phase One In the first phase of the project, the authors decided to explore alternatives to graded readers and began to use articles from online magazines taken from the Learn English Magazine (British Council). The articles covered many contemporary topics and were graded according to levels from intermediate to advanced. Over two teaching blocks (10 weeks), the authors printed and distributed more than 20 different articles each week. Students chose one based on its title and took it home to read in their own time. As these were mainly non-fiction, they appealed to many students who were less fond of reading fiction. Students were also asked to find another related text and were invited to bring it to class to discuss. The first Book Club Café sessions were held during class, for about 45 minutes every Friday at the end of class. The classroom furniture was rearranged so that the students could form small discussion groups of 3–4. All course notes were put away apart from the article the students had taken home to read and the related text they had brought. These were sometimes shared on a mobile device rather than in print. The
6 English Australia Journal Volume 32 No 2 students were asked to talk to each other about the articles they had chosen and to share the main points in their related texts. Biscuits were handed around and some background music was selected from YouTube to provide a café-like atmosphere. While this approach was moderately successful in that some students had read the articles and were willing to participate, there were three main disadvantages. The choice of reading material was still limited and despite the wider range of options, some students reported that they could not find anything interesting. The students also found it difficult to find a related text and frequently, they found one by simply googling the title and printing the first text that appeared in their search. They would bring the related text to class, but often they had been unable to read it because it was too difficult. A further challenge was that teachers were still following up the reading of the articles with some comprehension questions, and this meant that they had to read all of the articles themselves (in addition to preparing the questions), which meant a considerable investment of time on the teachers’ part.
Phase Two The authors met regularly to reflect on the progress of the Book Club Café and we noted from our observations that many students were still not fully engaged in reading outside the classroom. We decided to adapt the program in two significant ways. Inspired by the famous quote by Crystal ‘Vocabulary is the Everest of a language’ (1995, p. 119) we transferred the emphasis onto vocabulary acquisition rather than on the traditional comprehension questions to test understanding. We hoped that the students would be less anxious about reading and more likely to read if they knew they would not be tested. Students were asked to bring five new words from their reading to Book Club Café sessions and to share and teach those words to other students. They were asked to write the words on the write-on walls in the classrooms and to explain the word form and usage of the word, in addition to supplying a sample sentence. The teacher’s role was simply to facilitate, observe and assist if necessary as the students taught their new words to their peers. As comprehension was not tested, the teachers did not have to read all of the texts, and this meant that we could offer the students many more possibilities from a wider range of reading materials. We made the second change after we attended a professional development session by Professor Phil Benson on the concept of Learner Autonomy. The authors began to realise that it was vital to make this project more student-centred but also that it was necessary to assist the students to develop and exercise autonomy in their studies and in their extra reading. Benson’s three-part model of learner autonomy – ability, freedom, desire (2013, p. 3), provided a framework which allowed the students
Volume 32 No 2 English Australia Journal 7 much more freedom of choice but which acknowledged the teachers’ role in the process, in assisting the students to make wise choices and in motivating them to take some initiative. We interpreted ‘ability’ as the tools and strategies which students developed to help them choose suitable texts; ‘freedom’ as the power students had to make the decisions themselves as to what, when and where they would read, and ‘desire’ as the motivation students built to continue reading. This second phase of the project was designed around this three-part model. In the second phase, we introduced online reading materials as most of the students had reported in the post-questionnaire that they preferred reading online. Initially ER Central (www.er-central.com) was selected as the source of reading material, as it has many features which could be incorporated into the project. With thousands of texts divided into 20 levels, the students had a very wide range of choices and could select reading material at a comfortable level for them. A ‘find your level’ tool is supplied, but students were also shown how to determine a comfortable level by counting how many new words appear on the each page. If there are more than five unfamiliar words, the text is too probably too difficult for extensive reading (Bamford & Day, 2002). A further advantage of the ER Central website is that the site captures data on the number of words and texts, and also the time spent reading, which meant that not only could students track their own progress, but when this data is emailed to a teacher, it was possible to track the number of texts and words which are being read. This information proved invaluable in collecting data to measure the participation rate and the amount of reading which the students were actually doing. The Centre uses five-week blocks and the program is structured in the following way (see Table 1). In Week 1, during class, the Book Club Café is introduced to students and they are invited to register on ER-Central. The students are assured that the project is voluntary and they will not be assessed. Depending on the level, teachers can use this session to assist students in the election of texts and in the understanding and recording of new words. From Week 1, students start reading in their own time and record several new words, which they bring to Book Club Café. During Book Club Café sessions (which last 30–60 minutes), students are divided into groups of three or four, and they teach each other new words and record the vocabulary they have learnt from their peers.
8 English Australia Journal Volume 32 No 2 Table 1: Book Club Café Methodology Week 1 Weeks 2–5 SET-UP READING BOOK CLUB CAFÉ (Class-tme: 1hr session) (Independent tme) (Class-tme: 30–60min session per week) • Introducton of Book Club Students: Students: Café and importance of reading • choose their own texts • peer teach vocabulary (groups of 3-4 students) • Introducton of online • read to texts outside class- reading tool (websites) tme • record new words from classmates • How to select appropriate • record new words texts • enjoy a relaxed and fun atmosphere • How to understand and record new words • see the beneft of reading Ability Freedom Desire The relaxed and fun atmosphere during the Book Club Café sessions is created by offering the students biscuits and providing background music. The teacher’s role in these sessions is to act as facilitator, as the students basically run the sessions themselves.
Phase Three At the end of each five-week block, students were asked to respond to a questionnaire which provided us with feedback on the project from the students’ perspective. This enabled us to make changes to the program which were essential to ensure its sustainability and we are continuing to do this. After Book Club Café had been operating successfully for several months, we noticed that some students had completed entire levels from the ER-Central website. Although they were becoming used to reading, which was one of our primary objectives, we realised that in order to maintain student interest, it would be necessary to offer different sources of on- line reading materials and to vary the follow up activities in class (see Tables 2 and 3).
Volume 32 No 2 English Australia Journal 9 Table 2: Websites for Extensive Reading Practice Name of Website URL ER-Central www.er-central.com Britsh Council – Learn English htps://learnenglish.britshcouncil.org/en/ magazine ESL Fast htp://www.eslfast.com/ Project Gutenberg www.gutenberg.org News in levels www.newsinlevels.com ESL BITS htp://esl-bits.net/ Baen Ebooks htp://www.baenebooks.com/c-1-free-library. aspx Lit2go htp://etc.usf.edu/lit2go/ Free graded readers for extensive reading htp://aj3000.com/wp/free-graded-readers/ ESL Yes! www.eslyes.com
Table 3: Suggested Follow-up Activities According to Level of Proficiency Proficiency Level CEFR Suggested follow-up activities at Book Club Café Beginner A1+ • Spelling competton with new words • Actvites focussing on pronunciaton of new words Elementary A2 • Word games (e.g., hangman, bingo) • Students draw pictures of new words Intermediate B1 • Peer teaching of new vocabulary • Students write sentences with new words • Students create their own class glossary Upper-Intermediate B2 • Students highlight grammatcal features that have been taught in class • Students verbally summarise texts to other student Academic English B2+ • Discussion of topics/texts read • Concordance research of words • Students write summaries of what they read
10 English Australia Journal Volume 32 No 2 Findings The response to the Book Club Café project has been overwhelmingly positive. In the second phase of the project, which coincided with the 25-week period of the Exploratory Practice study, there were 258 students in the target General and Academic classes and the authors monitored how much reading those students did over each five- week period. Of the 258 students, 238 (92.24%) read a minimum of three texts per five-week block, with an average of 14.34 texts (Figure 2) and 6891.9 words (Figure 3). The remaining 20 students chose not to participate, but of those who did, no one read fewer than three texts per five- week block. Approximately 20% of these students read more than 30 texts and nearly 25% read more than 9000 words in each five-week period.
48-51 5.46% 42-47 3.36% 36-41 4.62% 30-35 5.88% 24-29 5.04% 18-23 13.45%
Number of texts 12-17 25.21% 7-11 21.85% 3-6 15.13%
0.00% 5.00% 10.00% 15.00% 20.00% 25.00% 30.00% Percentage of students (n=238)
Figure 2. Number of texts read per student in a 5-week block.
17-19 3.36%
15-17 4.62%
13-15 2.52% 11-13 7.14% 9-11 14.29%
7-9 2.52%
5-7 24.37% 3-5 19.33% Number of words (thousands) 1-3 21.85%
0.00% 5.00% 10.00% 15.00% 20.00% 25.00% 30.00% Percentage of students (n=238)
Figure 3. Number of words read per student in a 5-week block.
Volume 32 No 2 English Australia Journal 11 In order to measure the success of the project, students were asked to complete a questionnaire at the end of each five-week block. Responses are as follows: • 96.62% of the students thought they had read more as a result of Book Club Café. • 92.41% of the students believed their vocabulary had improved. • 100% of the students wanted Book Club Café to contnue. At the end of each block, students were asked to comment on what they liked and disliked about Book Club Café. Comments from students included (transcribed verbatim) can be seen below. On discovering reading: • The Book Club Café gives a way for me to read. • I read a book easily. I learned more vocab and I notced that I have to learn more. • Allows us to reading regularly. • I found Sherlock Holmes! On learner autonomy: • I always choose some texts which I feel interested. • I do like select my own text each week because it makes me feel freedom. I’d like to study in a comfortable environment. On language development: • Not only vocabulary improved but also we always training sentences grammar improved too, so I think overall English improved. • We always talked to each other. I think my speaking and vocabulary were improved. Other comments: • It’s very comfortable and relaxing. • We can learn vocabulary joy. We noted the sense of empowerment which many students reported, as verbs such as ‘allows’ appeared frequently in the comments. This indicated that many students had simply not known how to select reading material, reinforcing our belief that a structured ER program is a necessary addition to any English language program.
12 English Australia Journal Volume 32 No 2 Negative comments from students mainly related to the fact that the Book Club Café sessions were too short, or not frequent enough. As a result of this feedback, the authors introduced an option to hold a second session per week; that is, two half-hour sessions instead of a single one hour session. There were some students (4.6%) who disliked reading online and for this reason, we included the option in Phase Three of using graded readers from the library. Several teachers who also participated in the project commented as follows: • The students were comfortable in the Book Club Café, and they all seemed to be willing to discuss what they had read. • This should be a part of every course. [from a relief teacher who had never used Book Club Café before] • The Book Club Café is very easy to run, in fact it almost runs itself as the students have been doing it for a few weeks and know what to do. • I observed that the students’ ability to teach new words has improved over the course of the fve weeks. • The biggest surprise this week was that the three who had not been reading very much over the frst four weeks, had gone to the library in their own tme to borrow books that they were interested in. This was something that they did out of their own initatve, and this allowed them to partcipate much beter in the actvity this week. • I hadn’t used Book Club Café and this was the frst tme I taught this class. I asked them if they liked it and 100% of the answers were positve. All students said they enjoyed Book Club Café, that they will contnue reading, that it motvated them and that they would like to contnue with Book Club Café next block.
Limitations Because the Book Club Café is not an assessed activity, the authors were unable to measure students’ language development through conventional testing methods. A further limitation is that a number of students study at the Centre for only one block of five weeks and it is very difficult to ascertain their improvement in such a short timeframe. We feel that further research is warranted and it is our intention to begin tracking several long- term students over an extended period of time.
Implications The authors have compared the Book Club Café to a ‘recipe’, with some essential ingredients, and with others which are optional or that can be determined by the
Volume 32 No 2 English Australia Journal 13 teacher, provided the primary purpose is to motivate students to read a wide selection of texts which are appropriate for their level and which interest them. The Book Club Café is successful because it incorporates four key elements: 1. Online reading: Encouraging the students to read online was overwhelmingly successful, as most of the students preferred reading online to reading from print material (more than 80% in the post questionnaires). The main advantage was that online reading provides a much greater range of options for students but it was also much more affordable than buying books, and much more flexible in that students could read from their mobile devices at any time. Although ER Central was selected to launch the project, the range of online reading options is growing continually and the authors are extending their database of suitable websites. 2. Learner autonomy: Bamford and Day’s (2002) third principle of Extensive Reading suggests that learners should have the power to choose what they want to read in the same way that they can select what they want to read for pleasure in their first language. However, Benson’s three-part model provides new dimensions to the concept of learner autonomy by adding the notions of ‘desire’ and ‘ability’ to the basic principle of freedom of choice. The Book Club Café in-class sessions contribute to the cultivation of a ‘desire’ to read, but the authors exploration of the term ‘ability’ suggests that students need support and training, specifically with some scaffolding from the teacher, in the development of autonomy so that they know how to select material which is not too difficult for them. 3. Follow-up activities: Bamford and Day’s (2002) sixth principle is that reading be its own reward; however, this does not preclude some follow up to extend the student’s ability to provide additional motivation. However, whilst the recording and peer teaching of new words was successful, it proved to be quite difficult for lower level students and the authors experimented with alternative follow up activities, such as spelling games. The authors are continuing to add to their database of possible classroom activities. 4. Relaxed café-life atmosphere: The in-class sessions create a friendly relaxed atmosphere with snacks, music and comfortable informal seating arrangements so that the students could begin to see the reading and subsequent vocabulary-based activities as a social event rather than a typical classroom experience (Allwright, 1984). Although the project was originally conceived to develop reading skills, the post- questionnaires indicated that the students particularly appreciated the opportunity to engage in discussion about a text or texts which they had chosen themselves and in which they felt invested. Thus, their level of motivation was higher, they were more relaxed and they had a real opportunity to improve their language.
14 English Australia Journal Volume 32 No 2 The Book Club Café concept is now embedded into the curriculum at the Centre, and after having presented at several local and international conferences, the authors are in communication with several other centres in Australia and overseas where Book Club Cafés have been introduced. We believe that this model can be replicated in virtually any teaching context and with students of any level, provided the teachers have the support of their management. One of the strengths of the program is that it is easily transferable. It takes only a few minutes to explain the concept and it has been used successfully by relief teachers, practicum teachers, new teachers, and even by those who were initially uncertain about how to incorporate extensive reading into their classes. The ease with which other teachers could use Book Club Café demonstrates its transferability.
Conclusion The Book Club Café project has developed gradually over time, beginning with just two teachers, but the concept has been refined as we learned from the process and from other teachers who joined the project and who provided feedback. We have learnt that it is critical to allow for a great deal of flexibility in an extensive reading project as some follow-up activities may not be successful with some classes, and that it can be extremely hard, if not impossible, to motivate some students to read. Nevertheless, the authors are convinced that the Book Club Café is a concept which can lead many students to discover reading as a pleasurable activity and which can also improve their language skills. The authors acknowledge the Centre management’s whole-hearted support of the Book Club Café project which has enabled them to continue their research as they explore new technologies and new techniques to engage both teachers and students in extensive reading.
References
Allwright, D. (1984). Why don’t learners learn what teachers teach? The interacton hypothesis. In D. M. Singleton, & D. G. Litle (Eds.), Language learning in formal and informal contexts (pp. 3–18). Dublin: IRAAL. Allwright, D. (2005). Developing principles for practtoner research: The case of exploratory practce. The Modern Language Journal, 89(3), 353–366. Bamford, J. & Day, R. (2002). Top ten principles for teaching extensive reading. Reading in a Foreign Language, 14(2). Retrieved from htp://nfrc.hawaii.edu/rf/October2002/day/day.html Benson, P. (2013). Autonomy in language teaching and learning: How to do it ‘here’. Unpublished manuscript.
Volume 32 No 2 English Australia Journal 15 Crystal, D. (1995). The Cambridge encyclopaedia of the English language. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Day, R. & Robb, T. (2015). Extensive reading. In D. Nunan & J. C. Richards (Eds.), Language learning beyond the classroom (pp. 3–12). New York: Routledge. Grabe, W. & Stoller, F. (2011). Teaching and researching reading. London: Pearson Educaton. Krashen, S. (1988). Do we learn to read by reading? The relatonship between free reading and reading ability. In D. Tannen (Ed.), Linguistcs in context: Connectng observaton and understanding (pp. 269–298). Norwood, NJ: Ablex. Naton, P. (1997). The language learning benefts of extensive reading. The Language Teacher, 21(5), 13–16. Robb, T., & Kano M. (2013). Efectve extensive reading outside the classroom: A large scale experiment. Reading in a Foreign Language, 25(2), 234–247 Waring, R. (2009). The inescapable case for extensive reading. In A. Cirocki (Ed.), Extensive reading in English language teaching (pp. 93–112). Munich: Lincom-Europa. West, M. (1926). The New Method series of reading-books (New Series): Handbook for Teachers. Bombay: Longman, Green.
Lesley Speer is an English language teacher and coordinator at the Macquarie University English Language Centre in Sydney, where she has worked for more than ten years. She has a special interest in fnding new ways to motvate students, and has also taught in Japan, New Zealand and Turkey.
Jose Lara has been an English Language teacher for over 20 years and has taught in Venezuela, Saudi Arabia, United Arab Emirates, Bangladesh and Australia. His areas of interest include extensive reading and listening, learner autonomy, translaton/interpretng studies and the use of technology to enhance the learning process.
16 English Australia Journal Volume 32 No 2 School in the cloud, feet on the ground: Language learning with SOLE
James Pengelley Independent
Jane Pyper British Council Hong Kong
This article presents an action research project conducted at a learning centre in Hong Kong in which the merits of Sugata Mitra’s Self-Organised Learning Environments (SOLE) are applied to an ELT context. Mitra has received significant support for his work on SOLE from various sources, including the TED network and Newcastle University, UK, where he oversees the SOLE Central research unit and The School in the Cloud website which aim to provide a radically modernised education to remote children around the world, as well as to those in mainstream urban classrooms by asking them to research ‘big questions’ on the internet with minimal guidance from a teacher. SOLE pedagogy makes some profound claims about the nature of education and characteristics of best practice, and yet there seems to be very little, if any, independent research available, especially in its application to learning a foreign language. We aimed to address this by investigating the quality of classroom discourse emerging during two SOLE sessions with four groups (N=58) in order to evaluate the merits of using SOLE in language learning environments. We conclude that without significant teacher training, learner training and teacher- intervention, the success of SOLE (and minimally invasive pedagogies) is highly context-dependent and limited as a language learning tool.
Introduction: From Hole in the Wall to SOLE In 2001, Sugata Mitra published findings from anthropological studies conducted in slums in India where he had built computers into walls to see if children could learn to use the internet (Mitra & Rana, 2001), concluding that they ‘seem to understand the technology fluently. Language and formal education do not seem to make any
Volume 32 No 2 English Australia Journal 17 significant difference’ (p. 221). He went on to conduct experiments on his ‘hole in the wall’ (HitW) that measured success by improvements on a computer icon recognition test score (Mitra, 2005), and later to publish studies suggesting children in remote Indian villages could achieve scores on-par with their peers in mainstream schools in subject areas ranging from molecular biology (Mitra & Dangwal, 2010), to intellectual maturity, mathematics, English (Dangwal, 2011) and English pronunciation (Mitra, Tooley, Inamdar, & Dixon, 2003). In 2014, Mitra attended the International Association for Teachers of English as a Foreign Language (IATEFL ) conference as a plenary speaker where he outlined his vision for Self-Organising Learning Environments (SOLE) and the future of learning – a school in the cloud – allowing direct provision of education to the most remote students and a redesign of the conventional classroom, allowing children to explore ‘big questions’ using only the internet, in a way that traditional curriculums do not facilitate. Through SOLE, Mitra claims children can tackle features of the traditional curriculum many years beyond their school age (Mitra & Crawley, 2014). Meanwhile, independent discussions of SOLE typically relate to the context of broader philosophical discussions of educational technology and its role in bridging social inequality, rather than considerations of the data and methodology underpinning SOLE pedagogy. Two prominent critics, Arora (2010) and Warschauer (2003), offer vivid accounts of failed HitW kiosks in Indian villages, citing lack of community integration by HitW mediators, poor provision and maintenance of computer hardware, and parents complaining of the projects being poorly organised and distracting children from their schoolwork. Arora suggests that while localised successes give the movement some legitimacy, the lack of independent data, combined with the lack of reporting of failed projects, justifies a degree of caution. Note that Mitra also refers to the HitW concept as ‘minimally invasive education’, which is applied to mainstream classrooms in the form of SOLE. So, bearing in mind the experimental conditions under which HitW was conducted (isolated Indian villages, minimal previous exposure to technology, and experimental conditions of up to nine months), we argue that regardless of the accuracy of such claims about education past, present or future, no fundamental change should be implemented without measured critique. Given Mitra´s tech-driven ideology and the implications of what a school in the cloud might entail, the key issue that remains to be addressed is what is happening ‘on the ground and with what outcomes’ (Selwyn, 2014, p. 39) when HitW-based theory is put into practice in SOLE. Greater detail is needed in promoting SOLE as a legitimate pedagogy. IATEFL 2014
18 English Australia Journal Volume 32 No 2 was an excellent example of this – with half the crowd standing in ovation, and the other half taking to the blogosphere in uproar at this ‘neoliberal agenda . . . incarnated in cuddly and charismatic sheep’s clothes’ (Dellar, 2014b). We argue that this mixed response is symptomatic of a ‘fundamental paradox’ (Arora, 2010, p. 695) in Mitra’s pedagogical message. On the one hand he condemns traditional pedagogical approaches that encourage students to learn information and retrieve it in tests, and in its place he promotes a new educational process that espouses the futility of knowing and learning facts (provided students have access to the internet), while also relying on traditional products of education (i.e., test scores that require students to retrieve learned information) to benchmark the success of HitW and SOLE. Ultimately, we question the assumption that SOLE is universally applicable that currently pervades Mitra’s work (Mitra, 2015), and we argue that several critical details of SOLE need to be clarified, including the role of the teacher, the mechanics that underlie the learning processes and specific strategies for teachers to enhance these. In order to highlight some of the inconsistencies in Mitra’s work, we referred to the transcripts of his three TED talks (on which Mitra relied for much of his publicity) and the text of his SOLE Toolkit (Mitra, 2015) to identify the following key themes that we believe warrant greater scrutiny.
The teacher’s role when children learn independently Tying HitW to SOLE is the notion that children can learn independently and more effectively with minimal input from teachers. Mitra argues that when children self- organise, a teacher only ‘sets the process in motion and then she stands back in awe and watches as learning happens’ (Mitra, 2013). Mitra fails to offer specific details of what the teacher’s role ought to be in his re- envisioned classroom other than as a ‘granny figure’ who offers praise, ‘inspires curiosity, develops language fluency and search skills’ (Mitra, 2015, p. 8). Interestingly, although SOLE promotes minimally invasive techniques, SOLE teachers suggest that the key to its success is what teachers do with the information students produce after a SOLE session (School in the Cloud, 2014).
The role of technology in education Mitra´s rhetoric in relation to educational technology equating to greater achievement and faster, more meaningful learning, which Thornbury refers to as ‘an implicit faith in the almost totemic power of the internet’ (2014), is especially concerning. On December 2, 2015, Mitra posted on his own Facebook page a response to a Guardian article (‘Tablets Out, Imagination In: The Schools that Shun Technology’), likening the report’s premise to the workings of extremist militia. Friesen (2008) calls this type of discourse ‘ideologically-charged common sense’, believing it fails to acknowledge
Volume 32 No 2 English Australia Journal 19 the complex realities of using technology in education. Our response to Mitra’s internet-driven ideology echoes Selwyn’s questioning of ICT as an ‘integral and inevitable feature of ‘modern’ forms of education’ (2014, p. 2).
The question of learning We would like to know specifically how Mitra intends to ‘design the future of learning’ (2013), as it is unclear what mechanisms for learning inform SOLE pedagogy. For example, one key learning objective in the SOLE Toolkit is that ‘students learn what constitutes viable evidence, and interrogate internet sources more critically’ (Mitra, 2015, p. 20). However, a SOLE Australia Network blog post outlines a SOLE session in which students concluded that ‘we only use 20% of our brain’ (SOLE Australia Network, 2014), which is actually myth (Highbee & Clay, 2010). The only solution for this according to the SOLE Toolkit is:
Ask questons about how they arrived at the answer by asking about their sources. This is a good opportunity to initate a conversaton about how to fnd reliable sources. (Mitra, 2015, p. 15) Not only does this assume teachers are adept at identifying reliable source online, but it also fails to give any guidance on a process that might show students how to identify such sources. As we will outline below, we noted our students had persistent difficulties accessing, processing and comprehending information online. Several groups were unsuccessful because they could not filter and select information appropriately and others were not able to formulate questions flexibly enough to generate meaningful Google results, even with teacher support, indicating significant problems in IT and reading literacy. The SOLE Toolkit’s only suggestion for problems in this area is is:
Since children have diferent reading levels, sometmes the best opton is to ask kids to explain their fndings in their own words rather than reading directly from a source. (Mitra, 2015, p. 21) This seems to be what Mitra means when he claims the future of learning means ‘students need to be able to read discerningly’ (Mitra, 2013) which is meaningless when students are faced with such significant comprehension difficulties such as those we observed. And while SOLE is described as a process-oriented pedagogy (Arora, 2010), SOLE documents provide little description of the mechanisms or explicit strategies to support the process that might produce discerning readers.
20 English Australia Journal Volume 32 No 2 Assumptions about learning contexts Although Mitra occasionally acknowledges the importance of the context in linking HitW findings to SOLE, The School in the Cloud continues to pursue the use of SOLE in both affluent mainstream classrooms in the UK as well as poorer, isolated classrooms globally, many of which are not native English-speaking environments.
I'm proposing . . . an alternatve primary educaton . . . where schools are not good enough, where teachers are not available or where teachers are not good enough. If you happen to live in a part of the world where none of this applies, then you don't need an alternatve educaton. (Mitra, 2007) We have found poor general awareness of how the experimental HitW-dependent variables (rural villages where many children have little to no contact with teachers and data collection over periods ranging from two to nine months) impact upon the mainstream pedagogical theory (SOLE). Here, it seems, there is little explicit acknowledgement in Mitra’s work that the rationale behind SOLE is based upon variables and contexts in HitW experiments that are so vastly different to the ones in which they are being applied (i.e., in SOLE).
Research questions In this paper we present an action research project conducted at our teaching centre in Hong Kong. We aim to address some of these inconsistencies in Mitra’s message, and contribute independent data to the discussion of SOLE and its merits. Based on the issues outlined above, we formulated the following research questions: • How do children respond to minimal interventon in SOLEs, and how does this afect task achievement? • Does the introducton of ‘minimally invasive’, inquiry-driven computer- based tasks provide optmal language learning opportunites? • Does SOLE encourage students to read discerningly?
Methodology Participants Our research was conducted with our own students at a teaching centre in Hong Kong with classes of up to 20 students (predominantly Cantonese speakers, 9–13 years old), attending 90-minute classes once a week. In total there were 58 students in four classes. We selected the classes we were teaching that were all of a similar age and the highest level offered at our centre for that age group (approximately
Volume 32 No 2 English Australia Journal 21 pre-intermediate–intermediate), giving us four classes of the following sizes. Table 1: Summary of Participants and Groups Teacher Group Number of students enrolled in group 1 A 11 2 B 20 C 17 D 10 Written consent-to-record was collected from three groups (Group B, C and D). In place of written consent, the project, student work and basic findings were discussed with parents from Group A on the final lesson of the semester, which parents attended in person.
Data collection We collected class recordings and written work during two SOLE sessions with each group, in which we aimed to follow the methodology outlined in the SOLE Toolkit for teachers (Mitra, 2015). Procedure and instructions to students were: • Approximately 10 minutes of plenary discussion and research question formation; • Approximately 30 minutes of internet research time; • 10–20 minutes of presentation preparation in the form of a simple poster; • Students can choose their own groups (an average of 3–4 students per computer or iPad), compare information, and may swap groups at any time. During each SOLE session, the teacher set the task and explained these rules to students. As teachers, we were primarily concerned with troubleshooting ICT issues, ensuring students were on task, and clarifying difficult language. As far as possible we wanted to leave the following elements up to the students to negotiate: the process of self-organising and sharing resources, searching for and choosing information, making and sharing notes, and negotiating search questions and alternatives. We aimed to relate the SOLE sessions as closely as possible to recently studied themes of work, and all four groups completed two lessons in a six-week period. Group A answered a number of different questions (see Findings section); groups B, C and D were asked to comment on the demographics of Hong Kong if it were reduced to a population of 100 people in the first, and researched one of four different survival stories in the media in the second. In data analysis we:
22 English Australia Journal Volume 32 No 2 • took observational notes during the computer-based research sessions, noting how long it took for students to start work in groups and if students re-organised, interacted between groups or changed groups during the activity; • categorised student-student and teacher-student interactions from the transcribed recordings to identify types of classroom talk; • asked Group A to re-read their post-SOLE posters and identfy which ideas they had ‘copied’ and which ideas were ‘original’ (writen in the students’ own words); • assessed the students’ ideas in terms of relevancy and accuracy to the topic; • asked groups B, C and D to provide anonymous written feedback to the questions: ‘How easy was it to find information?’ and ‘How well did you work in your group?’ We collected a total of 10.5 hours of voice recordings (from all classes), and written poster work from group A. These recordings were categorised according to different types of classroom talk outlined in Chappell (2014). Chappell (2014) suggests that certain types of spoken interaction in the language classroom provide richer language learning opportunities, the most enriching of these being inquiry dialogue, which is marked by speakers working towards a common understanding by exploring possibilities, building upon each other’s contributions, and is commonly achieved by speakers making a request for the other speakers to consider and reflect on possibilities rather than simply exchanging facts. In Excerpt 1, note the way the teacher and Student 2 work together, adding comments and inviting Student 1 to consider how and why the concept of an air bubble is relevant to the task, leading to a greater common understanding.
Excerpt 1: Example of inquiry dialogue S1: No so what this . . . what is this? S2: Oh . . . it's . . . you can always see some bubbles in the swimming pool . . . T: So, what's a bubble? Explain it to them. S2: Because the bubble supposed to be floating to the top of the sea . . . but since the ship is too large and it is locked let's just say the air couldn't escape. T: Right, so if the ship sank . . . how would you get air inside? If you're in a boat, where could the air be trapped? S1: Air bubble? T: Right, so he's like this – there's an air bubble and he's here . . . and this is the top of the ocean . . . so he's sitting in the water in his boat . . . there's an air bubble . . .
Volume 32 No 2 English Australia Journal 23 S2: The boat S1: Ooohh . . . Applying Chappell´s work to SOLE pedagogy, which claims that learning is enhanced when it occurs socially, we would expect one of three possible features of classroom interactions in SOLE lessons (Table 2). Table 2: Rationale for Classifying Spoken Interactions in SOLE Possible outcome Possible conclusion Frequent occurrence of inquiry dialogue SOLE efectvely supports socially driven, minimally invasive language learning. It provides a rich, interactve language learning environment.
Frequent occurrence of missed opportunites SOLE is an efectve method for language for inquiry dialogue learning, but direct teacher involvement is needed to draw specifc atenton to features of interacton paterns that best facilitate this process. The teacher may not be trained to respond to students’ contributons efciently.
Low occurrence/potental of inquiry dialogue SOLE is not conducive to language learning. to occur If SOLE does support language learning, it is unlikely to be dependent on the self- organisaton, group-based elements or minimal teacher interventon. While this presents a relatively qualitative approach to evaluating the quality of classroom interactions, we suggest that it provides a sound diagnostic framework to evaluate SOLE’s impact on the language learning environment. Based on our pilot project on SOLE in ELT (Pengelley & Pyper, 2014), we anticipated that these lessons would place students under relatively high cognitive loading, indicated by: • a high frequency of simplified and/or ineffective spoken interactions during task work; • a low occurrence of inquiry dialogue during SOLE activities; • a relatively high frequency of irrelevant/inaccurate ideas and sentences copied directly from their online sources; • a large number of students reporting difficulty in finding and accessing the appropriate information online.
24 English Australia Journal Volume 32 No 2 Findings Children’s responses to minimal intervention and self-organisation Students eagerly arranged themselves into own groups, often doing so before the instruction to begin work was explicitly given. When difficulties arose, they needed additional support in order to stay on task, despite being instructed that they could change groups and share information at any time. The most common problems students encountered were related to using iPads, dealing with the quantity of information online and persisting with reading lengthy texts with a lot of unfamiliar vocabulary (although students were shown how to use online dictionaries). We concluded that without supervision, there were several instances where some students may have been unable to complete task.
The effect of SOLE on learning environment: Classroom talk We noted a range of types of classroom talk. However, we found little occurrence of inquiry dialogue, and a relatively higher occurrence of missed opportunities for student-student and teacher-student inquiry dialogue. Generally, inquiry dialogue was teacher-initiated and absent from student-student interactions. In the case of most missed opportunities, students seemed unreceptive to speech acts, especially those where the teacher or other students were making requests or asking questions to invite group members to wonder or consider options. This also poses the possibility that teachers were ineffective at presenting and exploiting opportunities for inquiry.
Excerpt 2: Missed opportunity for inquiry dialogue in SOLE T: Turtle blood is apparently amazing when you can't find water . . . Gross, huh? S1: Hohhhhhh!! T: Apparently turtle is . . . S2: Very impressed. T: The most delicious thing you can ever have. S2: Fisherman! His job. In addition, we noted communication breakdowns and a lack of task focus typically occurring when students had difficulties using the technology (see Excerpt 3). This highlights the assumption in SOLE that students will bring with them a degree of technical literacy that we did not observe in our students. We also identified a type of classroom talk, which we refer to as ‘echoing’. We feel this is distinct from a common repeating or recasting type of speaking strategy as it was most common in groups with a large range of abilities in spoken English, in
Volume 32 No 2 English Australia Journal 25 groups with more than one male student, with the weaker student continuing to repeat words or chunks previously uttered by a stronger student and in a manner that typically caused distraction within the group.
Excerpt 3: Echoing talk and difficulties using technology S1: No just go to the Wikipedia will be alright . . . here . . . No why don’t you give me! S2: I don’t know – what do you give me? S1: No! What are you doing? S2: No, what are you doing? S3: [laughs] S1: Give back the mouse ah! . . . No just go to Wikipedia . . . Who knows how you spell? S3: James know how to spell . . . This! S1: Anyway, I’m not going to write. S3: No! S1: No no! S2: No no! S1: Give me back . . . this one . . . this one! S3: Nooooooooo! We interpreted this as weaker students attempting to engage in the group dynamic through word play.
Use of SOLE to develop discerning readers: Evaluation of students’ ideas The results of Group A’s self-assessment of their work are presented below. As all information was presented as simple noun or verb phrases, none of the sentences produced were considered complete. Here we defined an ‘idea’ as any proposition (either statement or opinion) that was presented by a student in their final poster, for example: ‘People play sports to stay healthy.’ In SOLE 1, the students were asked to investigate why people play sport, and directed to consider historical, social and personal reasons. Of the posters we received, all were submitted in a list format, identical to the single common website that all students relied on. Only one student presented information in an organised way, with points listed in conceptually related groups. Table 3 also suggests that students had
26 English Australia Journal Volume 32 No 2 difficulty distinguishing between their own ideas and those they had copied from the online material they found. Table 3: SOLE 1 – Why Do People Play Sports? Group A = 11 students in class Total number of posters completed = 7 Total number of ideas presented 70 Total number of ideas presented in complete sentences 0 Total number of copied ideas reported by students 38 Total number of ‘original’ ideas reported by students 32 Total number of original ideas identfed by teacher 2 Total number of invalid/irrelevant ideas identfed by teacher 7 In SOLE 2, students were given a choice of one of several questions that were based on topics the class had recently covered in the syllabus: i) Why is the elephant so big? ii) Why do elephants walk on their toes, not their feet? iii) How do submarines go under the sea? iv) How can camels walk so far? Of the posters completed, all students answered this task as though there was one concise answer to their question rather than a range of possible factors, making answers very short, rather than a balanced response indicative of inquiry-driven topic exploration. Table 4: SOLE 2 – Various Questions Based on Topics Covered on the Course Group A = 11 students in class Total number of posters completed = 6 Total number of ideas presented 9 Total number of ideas presented in complete sentences 5 Total number of copied ideas reported by students 5 Total number of ‘original’ ideas reported by students 4 Total number of original ideas identfed by teacher 4 Total number of invalid/irrelevant ideas identfed by teacher 7
Student opinions of task achievement Student responses to three short feedback questions were collected from groups B, C and D. Summaries of their responses are given below.
Volume 32 No 2 English Australia Journal 27 Table 5: Summary of Student Responses to Question 1 Q1: Was it easy to find the information? Yes 23 No 20 No response 4 Most affirmative responses were justified with reference to either the availability of information (‘We just have to get to the government website’) or the amount of information (‘There is so much information on the internet’). Negative responders gave more qualitative reflections, referring to troubles in dealing with the quantity of information online, and selecting information appropriately:
‘There are so many versions of the same informaton, I don’t know which is reliable.’
‘[Although] we can found much informaton together, we don’t use much what we had search.’
‘I learned not to trust everything I see and search about it for several minutes before I believe it.’ Table 6: Summary of Student Responses to Question 2 Q2 : How well did you work with your group? Well 43 Not well 4 Most students reflected positively on their group work, commenting that they had spoken Cantonese on a scale from ‘a bit’ to ‘a bit too much’. Eight students made explicit reference to dividing the research between two groups (i.e., students split the number of information points/questions evenly between the two) to save time. This is particularly relevant given SOLE’s reliance on collaborative learning.
Conclusions and Comments In this research project, we attempted to assess SOLE in its purest form (following procedures in SOLE documentation) using topics we had noted would probably interest our learners (based on their reactions to recent themes of study in the courses). Despite this, we acknowledge that on top of the qualitative nature of data collection here, the nature of the interactions and responses we collected from students may well be linked to the nature of the challenging and unfamiliar tasks we set, rather than a result of SOLE methodology itself, which may have led to students feeling demotivated from a lack of task direction.
28 English Australia Journal Volume 32 No 2 However, as one of the few independent sources of data on SOLE, it does raise some very pertinent questions.
SOLE and ‘discerning readers’ We were not satisfied that our students successfully explored or discussed the questions posed, nor were they able to read discerningly enough to select relevant and accurate information. We question Mitra’s claims that SOLE results in children learning content years ahead of their time (Mitra & Crawley, 2014) because we observed many instances where reading ability directly restricted students accessing information, thereby limiting successful task achievement. The unstated implication in SOLE is that students will simply learn to read effectively, filter and select information successfully if teachers provide them with minimal guidance and maximum opportunities. We conclude that this remains an unsatisfactory rationale: asking students to behave like experts does not automatically make them so, and nor will it despite the best and repeated efforts of well-intentioned (or minimally invasive) educators. Our observations here are in-line with the ‘overwhelming and unambiguous evidence that minimal guidance during instruction is significantly less effective and efficient’ (Kirschner, Sweller, & Clark, 2006, p. 76). Ultimately, if we want students to develop the ability to analyse, evaluate and critique, they first need to know facts and have knowledge in order to apply these skills (Christodoulou, 2014). Indeed, students who tackle problems with more prior knowledge generally achieve better educational outcomes (Willingham, 2007). Based on the relative lack of satisfactory task achievement in the SOLE lessons we observed, we suggest introducing open-ended internet-based research activities is not a viable solution to a contemporary design of learning unless greater clarity on the teacher’s role and learning mechanisms is offered.
Children’s responses to SOLE Although we observed consistent and efficient self-organisation in our classes, we remain unconvinced that this inherently enhances learning, nor is it a pre-requisite for enhancing task outcome. We feel that the key determiners of task achievement in SOLE lessons are:
i) students’ technical literacy;
ii) their reading ability in the target language;
iii) their ability to evaluate and select important informaton;
iv) their pre-existng knowledge of the topic they are researching.
Volume 32 No 2 English Australia Journal 29 At present, the best SOLE guidelines can offer, in terms of pedagogically supporting teachers, is an assumption that they will improve with plenty of practice. Looking at the range of information students found, and their comments and awareness of difficulties with accessing information, our students’ responses to SOLE were mixed. We suspect this was due to the cognitive loading, ambiguity and unfamiliarity of the task.
Impact on the language learning environment Our observations support Chappell’s (2014) conclusion that teachers must acknowledge that ‘functions and forms that will realize [an] activity are important features to make explicit to students’ (p. 10). It may suggest that inquiry dialogue is not a natural feature of young learner classroom discourse, at least in the context our students are accustomed to, in which case additional control-type studies would be beneficial. Alternatively it may be that when compared to ICT-based tasks like SOLE, traditional and familiar classroom tasks (such as collaborative written activities) place lower cognitive demands on learners, enabling them to focus on and engage in more complex social interactions when operating in a foreign language (Pengelley & Pyper, 2016). However, if spoken interactions emerging in SOLE are to be fully exploited for language learning, this ultimately requires direct, intentional and carefully staged teacher-mediated classroom behaviour. It is worth acknowledging the possibility that with further exposure and reflection, our students may come to benefit from and enjoy SOLE lessons. We feel that our students’ educational experiences, as learners in Hong Kong, were significant factors in the difficulties they encountered in our SOLE lessons in terms of task achievement and the quality of classroom interactions. Hong Kong students typically attend school in classes of up to 40 students that tend to be highly teacher-led and in which it is not uncommon for English lessons to be conducted largely in Cantonese. It is not difficult to understand how a student from this educational paradigm might struggle in SOLE, and would rely on significant learner training in order to succeed. From a pedagogical perspective as much as an empirical one, this question of generalisability is ultimately the feature of Mitra's work that we find most contentious, and until he is able to justify the absence of any such commentary in his work, offer adaptations of his model to suit local learning contexts or further independent data is produced, we suggest that educators' keep their feet and their schools planted firmly on the ground.
30 English Australia Journal Volume 32 No 2 References
Arora, P. (2010). Hope-in-the-wall? A digital promise for free learning. Britsh Journal of Educatonal Technology, 41(5), 689–702. Chappell, P. (2014). Engaging learners: Conversaton- or dialogic-driven pedagogy? English Language Teaching Journal, 68(1), 1–11. Retrieved from htps://academic.oup.com/eltj/artcle-lookup/doi/10.1093/elt/cct040 Christodoulou, D. (2014). Seven myths about educaton. New York: Routledge. Dangwal, R. (2011). Public computng, computer literacy and educatonal outcome: Children and computers in rural India. Retrieved from htp://www.hole-in-the-wall.com/docs/Paper10.pdf Dellar, H. (2014a, April 5). Twenty things in twenty years. Paper presented at IATEFL Conference, Harrogate, UK. Retrieved from htps://www.youtube.com/watch?v=755gblfOjks&feature=youtu.be Dellar, H. (2014b, April 9). Why we should be afraid of the big bad wolf: Sugata Mitra and the neoliberal takeover in sheep’s clothing. Retrieved from htp://eltjam.com/ why-we-should-be-afraid-of-the-big-bad-wolf-sugata-mitra-and-the-neoliberal- takeover-in-sheeps-clothing/ Friesen, N. (2008, June). Critcal theory: Ideology critque and the myths of e-learning. Retrieved from htp://ubiquity.acm.org/artcle.cfm?id=1386860 Highbee, K., & Clay, S. (2010). College students' beliefs in the ten-percent myth. The Journal of Psychology, 132(5) 469–476. Kirschner, P. A., Sweller, J., & Clark, R. E. (2006). Why minimal guidance during instructon does not work: An analysis of the failure of contructvist, discovery, problem-based, experiental and inquiry-based teaching. Educatonal Psychologist, 41(2), 75–86. Mitra, S. (2005). Self organising systems for mass computer literacy: Findings from the ‘hole in the wall’ experiments. Internatonal Journal of Development Issues, 4(1), 71– 81. Mitra, S. (2007, February). Sugata Mitra: Kids can teach themselves [Video fle]. Retrieved from htp://www.ted.com/talks/sugata_mitra_shows_how_kids_teach_ themselves?language=en Mitra, S. (2010, July). Sugata Mitra: The child-driven educaton [Video fle]. Retrieved from htp://www.ted.com/talks/sugata_mitra_the_child_driven_educaton?language=en
Volume 32 No 2 English Australia Journal 31 Mitra, S. (2013, February). Sugata Mitra: Build a school in the cloud. [Video fle]. Retrieved from htps://www.ted.com/talks/sugata_mitra_build_a_school_in_the_cloud?language=en Mitra, S. (2015). Sole toolkit: How to bring self-organised learning environments to your community. Newcastle: School in the Cloud. Retrieved from htps://d3gxp3iknbs7bs.cloudfront.net/atachments/4878ee1d-c302-436f-b137- 991b1775c595.pdf Mitra, S., & Crawley, E. (2014). Efectveness of self-organised learning by children: Gateshead experiments. Journal of Educaton and Human Development, 3(3), 79–88. Mitra, S., & Dangwal, R. (2010). Limits to self-organising systems of learning: The Kalikuppam experiment. Britsh Journal of Educatonal Technology, 5(41), 672–688. Mitra, S., & Rana, V. (2001). Children and the internet: Experiments with minimally invasive educaton in India. Britsh Journal of Educatonal Technology , 32(2), 221–232. Mitra, S., Tooley, J., Inamdar, P., & Dixon, P. (2003). Improving English pronunciaton: An automated instructonal approach. Informaton Technologies and Internatonal Development, 1(1), 75–84. Pengelley, J., & Pyper, J. (2014, September). A SOLE study in a TEFL context. IATEFL Voices, 6–7. Pengelley, J., & Pyper, J. (2016). Speaking of ICT: Does it enhance the language learning environment? In A. Burns & N. Kurtoğlu-Hooton (Eds.), Using acton research to explore technology In language teaching: Internatonal perspectves (pp. 52–55). Retrieved from htps://www.teachingenglish.org.uk/sites/teacheng/fles/28313%20ELTRA%20 Report%20WEB.PDF School in the Cloud. (2014). Amy Dickinson: Self-organised learning [video fle]. Retrieved from htps://vimeo.com/87296509 Selwyn, N. (2014). Distrustng educatonal technology. New York: Routledge. SOLE Australia Network. (2014, March 20). Sole Australia Network. Retrieved from htp://soleaustralianetwork.tumblr.com/post/80152547697/sole-session-with-sugata- via-skype-to-ted Thornbury, S. (2014, April 10). Re: Why we should be afraid of the big bad wolf: Sugata Mitra and the neoliberal takeover in sheep's clothing [Blog comment]. Retrieved from htp://eltjam.com/why-we-should-be-afraid-of-the-big-bad-wolf-sugata-mitra-and- the-neoliberal-takeover-in-sheeps-clothing/
32 English Australia Journal Volume 32 No 2 Warschauer, M. (2003). Technology and social inclusion: Rethinking the digital divide. Cambridge, Massachusets: MIT Press. Willingham, D. (2007). Critcal thinking why is it so hard to teach? American Educator (Summer), 8–19.
James Pengelley has been working in Hong Kong as a CertTESOL tutor for the last 18 months. He has worked previously in Colombia, Thailand and Australia and was a recipient of the 2014 IATEFL John Haycraf scholarship for classroom research. His interests include integratng phonology into language lessons and investgatng classroom discourse.
Jane Pyper has worked in ELT for more than 10 years as a Cambridge Exam Co-ordinator at Kaplan in Perth, Senior Teacher at IH Bogota and Holiday Courses Co-ordinator for the Britsh Council Hong Kong.
Volume 32 No 2 English Australia Journal 33 Experiencing Thai Student Voice from a teacher's perspectve
Anthony Catto University of the Thai Chamber of Commerce
Anne Burns University of New South Wales
Student Voice is a concept which seeks to democratise education by empowering students with authority and influence to effect authentic change in educational systems. In so doing, Student Voice aims to appropriate respect and rights for students and allow for the professional development of teachers and administrators. The aim of the narrative self-study reported in this article was to expose an English language teacher, of British background, working at a Thai University to the experience of critical student voices in order to explore the potential for critical reflection, professional development, and transformative learning. The study focuses on the teacher's reactions to the written critiques of his teaching, authored by three of his students.
Introduction Student Voice is a movement which began in the 1990s, and is focused towards the fulfillment of the rights of students to be respected and empowered influencers of educational reform. The concept of Student Voice works towards students becoming full partners, whose views are to be considered and reflected upon, with teachers, educational administrators and policy makers, so that students, who are the least powerful members of the educational community (Fielding, 1999) can contribute positively to change in the classroom and beyond. According to Cook-Sather (2006, p. 1) the concept of Student Voice is premised on the argument that ‘young people have unique perspectives on learning, teaching and schooling; that their insights warrant not only the attention but also the responses of adults; and that they should be afforded opportunities to actively shape their education.’ While there have been many studies and projects on Student Voice in the West and
34 English Australia Journal Volume 32 No 2 in Chile, there has been very little focus on Student Voice in language education in general (Murphey et al., 2009) and in Thailand in particular. As Hongboontri (2014, p. 66) notes ‘students’ voices are not as extensively documented in literature in the field of language education compared to that in general education.’ While Hongboontri's study of Thai students' voices in relation to their EFL curriculum and instruction focused solely on the views of students, the present study relates to the experience of a native English speaker teacher in Thailand (the first author), who actively confronted critical Student Voice through qualitative narrative inquiry. The aim of this study was to allow for critical reflection on the part of the teacher that would contribute to his professional development.
Literature review To frame the study, two sources of literature are briefly surveyed, the first on the concept of Student Voice, and the second in relation to teacher professional development.
Student Voice The term ‘Student Voice’ encompasses a ‘spectrum of initiatives that advocate the redefinition of the role of students in research and educational change’ (Bahou, 2011, p. 2), which at the conformist end means ‘having a say when asked but without any guarantee of a necessary response’ (Bahou, 2011, p. 3) and at the more transformative end implies ‘a cultural shift that opens up spaces and minds, not only to the sound but also to the presence and power of students’ (Cook-Sather, 2006, p. 363). In their study, Fielding and Ruddock (2002) claimed that listening to students’ views of teaching and learning strengthened four dimensions: membership, leading to students feeling more positive about school (organisational); respect and self- worth so that students feel positive about themselves (personal); a sense of learner identity so that students are better able to manage their own progress in learning (pedagogic); agency where students realise that they can have an impact on what matters to them (political). In a similar vein, Cook-Sather (2006) lists the positive aspects of Student Voice as altering dominant power imbalances between adults and young people, effecting a cultural shift in educational reform, creating the possibility for students to speak on their own behalf in ways that shift the political power, and facilitating student respect and engagement in the classroom, which in turn promotes constructive participation. However, Student Voice presents challenges in that students may respond in ways educators may not want to hear, or may need to learn to hear (Johnston & Nicholls, 1995; Bragg, 2001; Cook-Sather, 2006). Bragg’s (2001) study, in which she worked with rowdy and aggressive students whose responses were ‘incomprehensible, recalcitrant
Volume 32 No 2 English Australia Journal 35 or even obnoxious’ (p. 70) despite her serious invitation to them to participate responsibly and intelligibly, provides an illustration of how initial emotions of shame, shock and a sense of failure led to critical reflection which made her challenge her assumptions that teachers should or could make students ‘better’ people. She began to realise that what she initially took to be student rejection of herself and her teaching was in fact recognition of her authority as a teacher. If Student Voice is to transition to building teacher capacity for educational leadership and change (Mitra, 2006), teachers must become open to the idea that, although students’ views may not always be positive and may well engender negative emotions, it is important to continue to listen if they are to contribute to teachers' professional development.
Teacher professional development A common theme which has run through concepts of teacher professional development (TPD) over the last two decades is that there should be a move away from the traditional practices of a ‘training model’ towards a more innovative focus on teachers as active agents in professional learning. Little (1993) argued that the dominant training model of TPD no longer fitted with the complexities and diversity of modern teaching and that it was in a poor relationship with the need for radical educational reform. She argued that educational reform needed alternatives that replaced knowledge consumption with problem-solving and knowledge production (see also Freeman & Johnson, 1998; Darling-Hammond, 2006; Burns & Richards, 2009). One of the six principles she advocated was to employ the techniques and perspectives of self-inquiry through action research, and to shift towards grass roots, voluntary collaboration where research could be conducted collegially in classrooms by teachers themselves. In line with these concepts of self-inquiry, more recently Golombek and Johnson (2004) proposed teacher autobiographical narrative inquiry as a means for teachers to develop agency in reflecting on their practices. In explaining this approach, the authors argue that ‘story, for many, is epistemologically the most authentic way to understand teaching from the point of view of the teacher’ (p. 308). They go on to state that ‘storying and restorying one's life enables a teacher to create new meanings from systematic inquiry and reflection’ (p. 308). Furthermore they argue that ‘teacher-authored narratives are not simply a device used to story one's experience, but a semiotic tool that facilitates teacher development and can document how teachers participate in and constitute their social reality.’ Golombek and Johnson’s (2004) study focused on teacher-authored narratives written by three English as a foreign language (EFL) teachers. They concluded that for these participants, teacher development was socially situated and mediated, and that the emotional dissonance they experienced in reporting their experiences mediated their cognitive dissonance
36 English Australia Journal Volume 32 No 2 in relation to their practices. From this study, the authors stress the importance of emotions in driving teacher development and conclude that autobiographical narrative inquiry allowed the teachers to ‘reconceptualize and reinternalize their new understandings of themselves’ (p. 326). The present study was shaped by the theoretical concepts and approaches outlined by Golombek and Johnson (2004). First, narrative inquiry was regarded as an authentic method to ground a study where the intention was for the first author to understand his reactions to Student Voice. Second, narrative inquiry allowed for critical reflection on his own teaching and his perception of self as a teacher. Third, emotional response to Student Voice became a legitimate spur to cognitive reaction and thus facilitated a process of professional self-development which in turn could be used pedagogically to address the concerns that were articulated through his students’ voices.
The study The study was qualitative and descriptive in nature and adopted autobiographical narrative methods of inquiry. Therefore in the spirit of autobiography, in the description of the participants, the research design, the findings, and the responses below, the first author is referred to in the first person. Data were collected through personal reports of the experiences of being taught by him, submitted by three students studying at a private Thai university in Bangkok. They were analysed through his evaluations of the main patterns in the responses and his cognitive reflections. The main aims of the study were to report his reactions when confronting critical Student Voice, and more specifically: 1. To examine the efects of emotonal response on cognitve refecton 2. To gauge the usefulness of narratve inquiry as a means of personal professional development
Participants and data collection For a study which inevitably relied on personal associations with students and critical engagement with their responses, it was not possible to conduct research with anonymous respondents. Thus, it was necessary to acknowledge and embrace the subjectivity inherent in the study and to use it as a tool for drilling into the data to obtain a rich and deep autobiographical reaction to experiencing Student Voice. Eight students, who were studying in my class, were invited to provide written critiques of my teaching, and to conclude with their opinions on what native English speaking teachers in the university could do to improve their practice. The students were asked to write their critiques after the course had ended to ensure they did not feel any coercion or discomfort. The instructions to the students, who were contacted
Volume 32 No 2 English Australia Journal 37 individually to avoid interaction with each other, can be found in Appendix A. These instructions were deliberately general and vague in nature so that they were free to write whatever they wished, as it was their voice that was of interest and not mine. Unfortunately, the majority of students proved to be reluctant to respond, possibly because they did not feel comfortable undertaking such a task. However, two fourth year English majors (one male and one female), Tom (see Appendix B) and Sally (see Appendix C), and one first year Communication Arts student (male), Dick (see Appendix D), eventually participated in the study (all names are pseudonyms). These three students had relatively high proficiency and they were able to write a comprehensive evaluative account in English. In addition, they would not be studying with me in the future and therefore were likely to feel relatively free to write critically without fear of any consequences. I had known Tom and Sally for four years and had not only taught them in class but engaged in school extra-curricular activities with them, one of which was membership of a Toastmasters club where they all participated in public speaking activities on an equal basis. Dick was a first year student who was enrolled in my conversational English class for two terms.
Findings It is well acknowledged by many language teachers that students have a tendency to report positively about them, especially when asked to do so directly and their identity is known, as here. In research terms, this kind of response is akin to the ‘Hawthorne Effect’ (Landsberger, 1958, cited in Hirsh, 2015), where participants may reorient their behaviours ‘to suit the study focus or goals’ when ‘information about the study is shared with [them] prior to or during collection of data’ (Hirsh, 2015, p. 380). This proved to be the case in this study and on reading their reports (see Appendices 2–4), I found the students’ positive opening comments to be comforting as they allowed me to face any criticisms with stronger self-confidence. However, the students had been asked to write as frankly as possible, and in order to adopt the principles of Student Voice, I needed to discard my personal conceits and assumptions about my teaching and to bracket my authority and power as a teacher. Reading the reports from the students therefore involved considerable trepidation on my part. While the students eased their criticisms with considerable praise and couched them kindly and in modest terms, as I read I became acutely aware of an underlying serious and responsible critique of my teaching practices which warranted consideration and reflection, as the main themes below clarify.
Classroom management Both Tom and Sally felt classroom discipline was too lax and that I did not set clear standards of behaviour. As Tom noted:
38 English Australia Journal Volume 32 No 2 However, everyone has their bad point and Mr.Tony who stll is a man, had some bad points. Mr Tony didn’t care much about a rule in classroom. Sometmes he was too kind to punish students who break the rules of the class . . . Some students were not interested to follow the rule or lessons at all and they needed to be warned or punished. Sally’s comment echoed Tom’s:
And with his kindness, I think maybe too kind. Some of his students may not stay on the track. So I would like to suggest that it would be beter if he would not give that student any second chance for the very late assignments. This can be the lesson for stubborn student in the best way My initial instinctive and defensive reaction was ‘Well, I’m a teacher not a prison guard and to “punish” students is to demotivate them from coming to class and from learning English.’ However, on reflection Tom and Sally’s comments made me realise that, for students, fairness is an issue of great importance. Those who respected my instructions and deadlines, like these students, felt unrewarded when others, who did not, suffered no consequences. It was not so much a question of ‘punishing’ bad behavior, but of fairly enforcing the rules I myself had made. I began to appreciate that Tom and Sally showed the maturity to know that a teacher should be professional rather than popular, and I was led to question whether my laxness in enforcing class discipline stemmed more from a shallow need to be liked, rather than from a professional ethic.
Teaching to the few Another important shortcoming highlighted by all three students was the fact that I tended to teach to the few who seemed to understand rather than to everyone in the class. Dick’s comment illustrates the point:
In my opinion, problem solving to teach efectvely you have to know truly all of your student’s [sic] problem and level of their skill. Beware the complicated and hard words, try to use easy words that you surely think he really know. This realisation shocked me, and hit me hard and painfully. What was most devastating was not the fact of this shortcoming in itself, but the knowledge that I had been teaching ‘badly’ according to my own strong beliefs, by subconsciously ignoring less able students for well over a decade. While this practice was unintentional and subconscious, my self-belief and self-worth were affected, and I even felt humiliated by the students’ perspectives. I recognised that even if I could justify this shortcoming to myself by referring to reasons such as difficulties in teaching classes of widely diverse abilities and a lack professional development to identify such problems, ultimately the responsibility to improve my communication with less able English speakers lay with me.
Volume 32 No 2 English Australia Journal 39 Assumptions about student understanding The students also pointed out respectfully, but in no uncertain terms, that many of their classmates were unable to comprehend much, if anything, of what I said in class. As Sally noted,
But sometmes, with his extensive knowledge, I really understand that he love to share it to every student in the class, so he may go so far and give us a lot of informaton over course textbook. Actually, this is great for me; it is very engage me and a lot of my friends into actve partcipaton in class. But some of students who has quite not good English skill, they could get lost. Because they might not know about what teacher are talking at that tme and textbook could be the only one thing that can help them to catch up with teacher. (We have to understand that they don’t dare to ask.) I found this revelation devastating. Not only did I feel stunned by this disclosure, but I also felt distressed that I was so unaware of this effect on my students. I felt that it invalidated much of my work over my teaching lifetime. What made this revelation worse was that Dick pointed out that I continually asked the students if they understood.
. . . he is worried about his teaching won’t make students understand so he ask them and ask them, then students don’t answer him anymore because they’re afraid to answer it’s wrong, that’s such a weak point of a great teacher. Beware anytme you speak don’t think everyone can understand the words you say…they won’t absolutely bravely tell you. They will be silent . . . Avoiding the question ‘Do you understand?’ was, in my mind one of the most basic of the rules of teaching that are taught in teacher training programs. I was appalled to be reminded that, after 18 years of teaching experience, I was still committing such an elementary mistake on a daily basis. Dick reinforced this point in further comments:
. . . as I said there are many students always pay atenton when you teaching but actually they don’t understand anything and when you ask them ‘Anybody have a queston?’ nobody shows out, afer the exam they normally fail. I have no idea too how to manage this problem but I want you to realize this problem very much, I pity them. The value of Student Voice The students’ reports suggested that they highly valued the opportunity not just to critique but to recommend their own constructive ideas for improvement. Several insightful comments were made about how I, and other native English teachers at the university more generally, could adapt their teaching for the Thai situation. Tom advised me and other teachers to broaden their demands on students to ‘some small
40 English Australia Journal Volume 32 No 2 projects where they could use their English for speaking’, to manage English ‘in their real life and real situations’ and ‘talk and handle any situation that they are facing themselves’. He also noted that he had learned from his own experience that English could be improved by ‘a battle between students’, or ‘a funny and small competition’. He advocated a more ambitious approach that would challenge, engage, entertain, and motivate students through song contests or ‘around-the-world’ quizzes. In a similar vein, an almost lighthearted comment from Dick reminded me that Thai students were very serious about learning, even though it sometimes appeared that they had a lax attitude to attending class:
I want you to know the nature of Thai student’s troubles such as ‘trafc jam’ ‘get up late’ they’ve many actvites to be late in the morning. All that what I told I just want you to lessen them a litle, listen to their problem sometme because most of foreign teacher always get a test when they come in immediately. The important thing of college students is a point, every point mean much things to them, nobody wants to drop their course and start learning again. These findings closely mirror those of an earlier study on Student Voice in Thailand conducted by Hongboontri (2014), who also found that the students he studied ‘demonstrated [their] analytical skills in critiquing their instructors’ (p. 75).
Emotional response and cognitive dissonance One of the main aims of the study was for me to reflect on my reactions to ‘hearing’ the voices of my students. While I enjoyed and accepted their praise, I was dismayed by their criticisms and my initial reaction was to reject them. As my defensiveness grew, my hurt turned to anger and I tried to invalidate the criticisms by justifying the undesirable practices. The ‘cognitive dissonance’ I experienced was couched in highly emotional responses that incurred real pain and anguish caused by the Student Voice experience. Golombek and Johnson (2004) argue that emotion and cognition are highly interconnected and that these relationships and interactions can create a mediational space that helps teachers to externalise their experiences. Mediational tools can take the form of private resources, such as reflection, journals or theoretical knowledge. In this instance the students’ reports and my own reflections had provided such a catalyst, one that could allow me to reconceptualise and transform my assumptions about my teaching. Recognising my students’ good intentions, I began to move beyond the negative feelings towards a process of deeper personal critical reflection. Gradual acceptance of my students’ criticisms as a legitimate and well-meaning perspective on their part led me to ‘hear’ what they were really saying beyond their natural politeness and kindness.
Volume 32 No 2 English Australia Journal 41 I came to acknowledge my lack of fairness in holding students accountable to classroom deadlines and procedures and questioned the actual nature of my classroom management and authority, and whether I was really maintaining good discipline. I also reflected on the amount of teacher talk I used and realised that it was excessive given the language ability level of the majority of my students. The process of reflecting on and deciphering the basis of the students’ comments enabled me to see that they were meant less as personal criticisms, or negative responses to my teaching, and more as suggestions for the future which could help me shape a personally motivated professional development plan. Having adopted a more objectively positive perspective on their comments, I began to become excited at the prospect of planning new ideas and practices to execute. Moving from an initial position of hurt and pain caused by the students' remarks, Student Voice was leading me to consider how to improve my professional practices on my own terms.
Discussion Student Voice recognises the rights of students to have more control over their educational lives, effect positive change in educational systems, and influence the professional development of teachers and administrators. In this study, while it was not possible to follow up with the students on all four dimensions highlighted by Fielding and Ruddock (2002), it can be said that the students were given an opportunity to reveal aspects of their classroom experience that really mattered to them (i.e., political agency). However, one of the barriers to successful implementation of Student Voice can be negative or defensive reactions by teachers and administrators to comments they may well perceive to be discordant with their own assumptions and beliefs and therefore discomforting (Mitra, 2006). To engage with Student Voice, teachers must be prepared for critiques that may shake their self-belief, self-confidence and self-worth to the core, particularly since teachers are used to being the more dominant, controlling force in the relationship with students. However, as Golombek and Johnson’s (2004) study illustrates, emotional dissonance seems to be a necessary precursor to a shift in teacher cognition and can become a positive force to spurring deep, critical reflection which can potentially lead to future positive classroom change. In this study, it was found that the deeper the discomfort, the more profound was the provocation to reflect and adapt practices for real change and improvement. Narrative inquiry proved to be an effective tool for investigating Student Voice. This approach allowed the students to tell their own stories about a particular classroom and their experiences of it and also permitted the teacher to begin to create a new story in response to his students’ versions. It constructed an ‘alternative theoretical
42 English Australia Journal Volume 32 No 2 framework which casts knowledge as socially negotiated and personally significant’ (Johnston & Nicholls, 1995, p. 99). Using a storytelling approach also enabled the teacher to ‘disengage’ to some extent from his immediate involvement in his routine practices and begin to objectify them. It is clear, however, that the study is limited in its scope. The number of student responses was very small (even though an attempt was made to include more students). Moreover, the responses to the analysis are subjective, personal and ungeneralisable. However, they may offer illustrations and ideas for teachers in similar university classroom settings, who are interested in knowing and understanding more about their students’ views of what it means to be in that class, experiencing that teaching, and who wish to pursue personally motivated professional development based on their students’ insights. Two important implications arise from this study. One is, that when utilising Student Voice, teachers need to be fully prepared for negative as well as positive feedback and for their own emotional reactions. Such preparation could include collaboration with administrators, with other, perhaps more experienced teachers, and even with professional educational counselors. Second, if it is adopted more broadly across a teaching institution, Student Voice should not be envisaged by administrators as a disciplinary measure against teachers. It needs to be looked upon, not as a means of negative evaluation of individual teachers and schools, but as a bold idea for collective improvements in educational systems, that include the important perspectives of students. In that way teachers can feel collectively rather than individually responsible for changes that are collaboratively based on Student Voice.
Conclusion Although the experience of Student Voice resulted in initial emotional pain, it led to genuine reflection on teaching practices, which in turn gave rise to cognitive acceptance and new enthusiasm for seeking ways to make positive and personally satisfying changes. By adopting the core concepts of Student Voice set out by Cook- Sather (2006) and making use of narrative inquiry and the notions of emotional and cognitive dissonance (Golombek & Johnson 2004), the study highlighted the essential importance of listening to students and respecting views that potentially have the power to transform routinised classroom practices.
Volume 32 No 2 English Australia Journal 43 References
Bahou, L. (2011). Rethinking the challenges and possibilites of Student Voice and agency. Educate, January, 2–14. Burns, A. & Richards, J. C. (Eds.). (2009). The Cambridge guide to second language teacher educaton. New York: Cambridge University Press. Bragg, S. (2001). Taking a joke: Learning from the voices we don't want to hear. Forum, 43(2), 70–73. Cook-Sather, A. (2006). Sound, presence, and power: ‘Student Voice’ in educatonal research and reform. Curriculum Inquiry, 36, 359–390. Darling-Hammond, L. (2006). Constructng 21st century teacher educaton. Journal of Teacher Educaton, 57(3), 300–314. Fielding, M. (1999). Radical collegiality: Afrming teaching as an inclusive professional practce. Australian Educatonal Researcher, 26(2), 1–34. Fielding, F. & Ruddock, J. (2002). The transformatve potental of Student Voice: Confrontng the power issues. Paper presented at the Annual Conference of the Britsh Educatonal Research Associaton, University of Exeter. Freeman, D. & Johnson, K. E. (1998). Reconceptualizing the knowledge-base of language teacher educaton. TESOL Quarterly, 32(3), 397–417. Hirsh, D. (2015). Researching vocabulary. In B. Paltridge & A. Phakit (Eds.), Research methods in applied linguistcs, (pp. 369–386). London: Bloomsbury. Hongboontri, C, (2014) Practcal curriculum inquiry: Students' voices of their EFL curriculum and instructon. Australian Journal of Teacher Educaton, 39(11), 65–81. Golombek, R. & Johnson, K. E. (2004). Narratve inquiry as a mediatonal space: Examining emotonal and cognitve dissonance in second-language teachers' development. Teachers and teaching: Theory and Practce, 10(3), 307–326. Landsberger, H. (1958). Hawthorne revisited: Management and the worker, its critcs and developments in human relatons in industry. Ithaca, NY: Cornell University. Litle, J. (1993). Professional development in a climate of educatonal reform. Educatonal Evaluaton and Policy Analysis, 15(2), 129–151. Johnston, P., & Nicholls, J. (1995). Voices we want to hear and voices we don't. Theory into Practce, 34(2), 94–100. Mitra, M. (2006) Increasing Student Voice and moving toward youth leadership. The Preventon Researcher, 13(1), 8–10. Murphey, T., Falout, J., Elwood, J., & Hood, M. (2009). Invitng Student Voice. Asian EFL Journal, 36, 1–34.
44 English Australia Journal Volume 32 No 2 Anthony Cato is a former police ofcer in the Royal Hong Kong Police. He is currently an English teacher at the University of the Thai Chamber of Commerce, and a PhD candidate at Thammasat University, Thailand. His research interests are English poetry as an EFL methodology and Student Voice.
Anne Burns is Professor of TESOL in the School of Educaton at the University of New South Wales, Australia, where she supervises doctoral students. Each year she is also a visitng professor at Thammasat University, Thailand, where she teaches a course in qualitatve research methods to PhD candidates.
Volume 32 No 2 English Australia Journal 45 APPENDIX A
Instructions To Students Dear . . . Having known you for a long time, I respect and value your views, and as a former student of mine you have had front seat experience of my classroom. Who better to honestly and frankly evaluate my teaching style? I thus ask you to please write a candid and full critique of the teaching style of Ajarn Tony while remembering that I had no control over course textbook and course content. Please conclude with your ideas as to how I and all the other native English speaking teachers [at the university] can improve our teaching. I intend to actively listen to your voice, not just to learn from you, but so I can improve my teaching for the betterment of future . . . students. I intend that your voice will not only be heard, but will have a real and positive impact on future educational reform and research.
APPENDIX B
Tom's Student Voice Report For four years of studying at . . . I had many opportunities to study with Mr. Anthony Neil Catto, both in class and other activities outside classroom. His teaching style is unique and unforgettable. Even in the subject that he did not take full control of all course contents, he still had different ideas of presentation which were more interesting than usual. The following paragraph is my feedback to the teaching style of Mr.Tony. Mr. Tony’s classes were always fun. He always had joke and good stories to tell in order to make a good example of lessons in a class. This is the best part of his teaching style. It made students remember the lessons so well and had no stress in the class. When no one was under pressure, all the students were joy and eager to study. Although some lessons was so hard to understand, but with the funny atmosphere in the classroom, everyone can learned better than it should be. So I suggest that every teacher should do the same. Make the class fun, make no stress, and students will love to learn. Mr. Tony always came in the class with William Shakespeare. Poems, novels and classic literature was combined in every of his lessons and that was wonderful. By introducing student into the world of literature, all the students learned a lot of morale and art of language which improved their skill in English. In addition, by this
46 English Australia Journal Volume 32 No 2 teaching technique, students can learned some new extra words that they could not found in original contents. Not only literatures but he also talked about history of the western world which he usually did when he had to teach about past tense. Students can learn the grammar better and knew the history of the world at the same time. Other good thing of Mr. Tony’s teaching style is a participation in a classroom. Tony always had questions and challenging quizzes for students. This made the classroom always full of excitement. Students always had to think and challenge their brains to find the answers or to complete his tasks. This made the classroom become to something far more than the classroom, it was like a center of knowledge that every students can share their opinions and experiences to others. All of students earn a lot more than knowledge in a book. However, everyone has their bad point and Mr. Tony who still is a man, had some bad points. Mr. Tony didn’t care much about a rule in classroom. Sometimes he was too kind to punish students who break the rules of the class. It was true that most of the students in Tony’s class paid their attention to the class but some were not. Some students were not interested to follow the rule or lessons at all and they needed to be warned or punished. Anyway, I have some advices for teacher of UTCC that might improve the quality of teaching. There are facing the true experience and the competition. Studying in a class might not enough for living, maybe the university should send students to works or do some small projects where they could use English for speaking. For example, send them to one of the shop that own by the university which usually have some foreign customer and let them do the work as a clerk for a day or two. Let them speak English in their real life and real situations. By meeting people from a different place and culture, their speaking surely to be improved a lot. Or we can give them a small project to do such as go interviewing some tourists at the tourist attraction. Let them talk and handle any situations that they facing by themselves might be a good way to improve their English and survivor skill. From the participation of many English competitions, I have learned that one of the best ways to improve English is to push yourself into the middle of a battle between students. So the university should organize more of the competitions between students. It doesn’t have to be a formal competition or a great one with great rewards. Just a funny and small competition is enough. A contest that everyone can join is more interesting than a battle of colossus. For example, we may make a break-time English folk songs contest for the one who interested in music, or make a monthly around-the-world quiz contest and let them share their knowledge in English. Students will be fun and learn many new things at the same time.
Volume 32 No 2 English Australia Journal 47 That are all my feedback and advices, I hope that my voice will help you and give a benefit to everyone in the university.
APPENDIX C
SALLY'S STUDENT VOICE REPORT Dear Ajarn Tony As one of your former students, It is such an honor to me to be one part of student voices and write this essay to my love and respect teacher. In my view, the passion of teaching has been one of the most important thing that every teachers in this world should have, and I can say that Ajarn Tony is a very passionate teacher. He is not just only motivating students to learn, but he also teaching us how to learn, and he did it so well in the way that making the class feel very relax and be a happy learning place. And I think he conveying that passion to everyone, most importantly to his students. Besides, Ajarn Tony has rich background information about his lesson and be able to explain every nuance of his subject and answer all the possible questions. But sometimes, with his extensive knowledge, I really understand that he love to share it to every student in the class, so he may go so far and give us a lot of information over course textbook. Actually, this is great for me; it is very engage me and a lot of my friends into active participation in class. But some of students who has quite not good English skill, they could get lost. Because they might not know about what teacher are talking at that time and textbook could be the only one thing that can help them to catch up with teacher. (We have to understand that they don’t dare to ask.) One more thing that I really impress about Ajarn Tony is that he is so fair and always tries to understand each and every student. He knows that each of the students has different personality and he know how to approach each kind of character, he never offend his students about assignments performance. And with his kindness, I think maybe too kind. Some of his students may not stay on the track. So I would like to suggest that it would be better if he would not give that student any second chance for the very late assignments. This can be the lesson for stubborn student in the best way. All in all, I love Ajarn Tony. This is I want to say, and I strongly believe that every his former students feel the same way because he is so energetic, professional, open- minded. He supports me in every way, he push me, he board my mind, and give me the best chance to join Toastmaster. (I still remember my first speech in Toastmaster.
48 English Australia Journal Volume 32 No 2 You helped me a lot. I'm really appreciated what you have done for me.) And I would like to say something to him . . . ‘Thank you for helping me grow and without your support, I couldn't be me today’
APPENDIX D
Dick's Student Voice Report Dear my good teacher ‘Mr Tony’ I have learned with him first time when I started at University of the Thai chamber of commerce [well-known ‘UTCC’] I’m major in Communication Arts and he taught us English for Communication 1 the general course requirement that everyone has to study. Before I went to the university I prepared myself for many harder courses than high school such as English and I thought it’s really not easy like A B C. First time we met I thrown out my thinking about afraid of foreign away because he’s very nice, he didn’t make us like you’re students and I’m a teacher so you have to be scared of me, he treated us like a friend I think he would like to do us breaking the ice and he also doesn’t be a serious guy. On the Breaking the Ice’s class he did some quiz to test ours English skill, someone was good at English Grammar but doesn’t speak well and someone was very pay attention the teacher but doesn’t understand anything he told I got a ‘Samong Yai certification’ [that mean Big Brain] prize from answering his quiz, actually I’m good at English a little and I’m worse at speaking but he saw something in me. I asked him what are the different between moral and ethics [I found them in my English textbook] at first he doesn’t know how to explain to make us figure it out but at the last he could let me understand by exemplifying Moral it’s just like the umbrella that cover you against the rain and Ethic is just like the sky that cover you against the sunray. He told me after I asked it ‘Smart is not what you know it’s how you get the answer and you answered with the first words so you’re smart, try to imagine something you ask the same question of 2 guys and both don’t know the answer how so you know which one is smart and which one is stupid? A or B? A goes and finds out the answer because he’s intellectually curious what’s the answer B doesn’t care and still doesn’t know he is stupid you’re A!’ I love English much but when I met him, he let me know I’m really appropriate in English. Mr Tony he is a great foreign English teacher. I’m very happy to study English with him. But all of the great ones they have their weak, some his good point effect the weak point too. His psychology that makes him always interest his students too much till don’t have some space between him and his student for the example ‘he is worried about his teaching won’t make students understand so he ask them and ask them,
Volume 32 No 2 English Australia Journal 49 then students don’t answer him anymore because they’re afraid to answer it’s wrong’ that’s such a weak point of a great teacher. Beware anytime you speak don’t think everyone can understand the words you say, everyone has the different wisdom level of vocabulary each other like you say A somebody knows ETHIC but there is a few students don’t know ‘what does ETHIC stand for?’ they won’t absolutely bravely tell you, they will be silent, these problem are not only Mr Tony but all of foreign teacher. In my opinion, problem solving to teach effectively you have to know truly all of your student’s problem and level of their skill. Beware the complicated and hard words, try to use easy words that you surely think he really know. Every students are your worth, they are the result of your pointer that you taught them well, as I said there are many students always pay attention when you teaching but actually they don’t understand anything and when you ask them ‘Anybody have a question?’ nobody shows out, after the exam they normally fail. I have no idea too how to manage this problem but I want you to realize this problem very much, I pity them. I have realized another learning problem, every foreign teacher always comes on time! That’s amazing, they like to teach! Once I count the time down at the 8.30 am. 3 2 1, ‘Good morning students, how are you?’ Wow! You have already known that most of Thai students don’t always come to class on time. Actually this ’s not your false but I want you to know the nature of Thai student’s troubles such as ‘traffic jam’ ‘get up late’ they’ve many activities to be late in the morning. All that what I told I just want you to lessen them a little, listen to their problem sometime because most of foreign teacher always get a test when they come in immediately. The important thing of college students is a point, every point mean much things to them, nobody wants to drop their course and start learning again, I also found this problem with myself, Bangkok the city of traffic jam, you know HAHAHA. You’re a great teacher Mr. Tony I surely think everybody want to learn with you, nobody want to learn nothing from strict teacher that threaten them everyday, making a position of YOU’RE STUDENTS AND I’M A TEACHER IF YOU NOT LISTEN TO ME I WILL GET YOU ZERO ‘CAUSE I DON’T CARE, I guess.
50 English Australia Journal Volume 32 No 2 BRIEF REPORTS
An analysis of perceptions: Writing task designers in an English for Academic Purposes (EAP) program and a specific academic discipline
Elaheh Gharesoufloo
Macquarie University
This qualitative case study investigated academic writing in two contexts. The first was writing task designers at an EAP program; the second was the academics in the discipline of Accounting and Corporate Governance. Two participants from each context volunteered their perspectives on the role and function of academic writing in their respective settings. Drawing on Roz Ivanič’s (2004) theoretical framework, data was coded and categorised into discrete concepts. Analysis of participants’ perspectives reflected core concepts encountered in Ivanič’s framework, although some responses combined discourses proposed as separate by Ivanič. The findings are discussed to illuminate potential implications for different stakeholders.
Introduction In recent decades, academic writing has shifted in perspective from an individual and autonomous skill set towards a more socioculturally situated practice (see, for example, Bawarshi & Reiff, 2010; Hyland, 2007; Lea & Street, 1998, 2006; Street, 1997, 2005). An understanding of writing as merely context-free linguistic features has been replaced by a broader view of writing as multi-layered and encompassing a wide range of linguistic and non-linguistic characteristics (Ivanič, 2004). Recent literature on academic writing emphasises sociocultural aspects rather than linguistic features (see, for example, Counsell, 2011; Gardiner, 2010; Ramoroka,
Volume 32 No 2 English Australia Journal 51 2012; Wolfe, Olson, & Wilder, 2014). Existing literature has focused on teachers’ perspectives regarding the importance and practice of discipline-specific writing (Goldsmith & Willy, 2016) and also the perspective of students regarding the degree of EAP writing courses’ effectiveness (Baker, 2013; Ong, 2014). However, a niche exists in the literature of academic writing, taking into consideration both linguistic and non-linguistic features from the perspective of writing test task designers. This gap motivated the current study to investigate writing test task designers’ perspectives on the nature of academic writing in an EAP program, and also in the context of an academic discipline using Roz Ivanič’s (2004) framework which provides a comprehensive view of language use. Her framework includes six discourses of writing, namely, skills, creativity, progress, genre, social practice, and sociopolitical discourses. This research was initiated as a small-scale case study with four participant task designers using Ivanič’s framework.
Methods Within the context of EAP and the selected academic discipline, a qualitative case study was deemed the best method of exploring different perspectives on academic writing. Data was collected in two stages. First, task descriptions, unit outlines, and evaluation criteria from both contexts were collected and analysed. It was assumed that the collected documents designed by the participants reflected task designers’ underlying perspectives about the nature of academic writing. Subsequent semi- structured interviews then provided participants the opportunity to elaborate on their perspectives. To facilitate data storage and analysis, Nvivo 11 for Windows was used. Coding was done in Nvivo through several steps: 1. Creatng 12 preliminary categories based on the interviews. The interview questons were based on Ivanič’s framework and the collected documents. 2. Conductng inductve analytcal coding based on the relevance of data to the categories. 3. Creatng six theory-based codes based on Ivanič’s six discourses of writng and categorising concept codes into theory-based codes. The process of coding was both deductive and inductive. Although all codes were framed within Ivanič’s framework, they were basically data-driven. The source texts related to the theory-based codes were then analysed to explore the underlying perspectives related to the sources.
52 English Australia Journal Volume 32 No 2 Findings Based on data analysis in both contexts, linguistic features were categorised under three headings of vocabulary, grammar, and rhetorical structure. The analysis of data resulted in the following findings: 1. Partcipants in both contexts believed that writng comprised two sets of features: context-free features and context-bound features. 2. Grammar and vocabulary were viewed as context-free when, for example, they were used in sentence structures; and as context-bound when used to refer to partcular academic styles or to formal structures such as hedging, nominalisaton and passive voice. 3. Rhetorical structure was viewed both as context-free and context-bound: a. Context-free structure: The logical organisaton of ideas within and between paragraphs using appropriate linking devices, clear and relevant thesis sentences, accurate utlisaton of introducton, body and conclusion paragraphs. b. Context-bound structure: Consttuent diferences in respectve writng exercises such as a business report or an argument essay. 4. In EAP the focus was primarily on context-bound and context-free grammar and vocabulary; conversely, in the discipline examined the focus was on context-free and context-bound rhetorical structure. In both instances this was context-free and context-bound, as outlined above. 5. Although partcipants in both contexts were aware of the contextual nature of academic writng, only one partcipant from each group mentoned the broader sociocultural context of writng as an important factor in the structure of academic expression. 6. In both contexts, providing ample opportunites, along with relevant high quality examples was deemed the best method to teach academic writng.
Discussion Analysis of participants’ perspectives in both contexts reflected core concepts in Ivanič’s framework, although some responses involved two or more of Ivanič’s proposed discourses. For example, while participants emphasised the importance of context-free linguistic features (corresponding to Ivanič’s ‘skills discourseʼ), it did not indicate an individualistic view. Although they valued grammar, vocabulary, and rhetorical structure as basic features in virtually all academic writing, they also believed an appropriately written academic paper comprised other features
Volume 32 No 2 English Australia Journal 53 contingent upon context. These views reflected Ivanič’s ‘genre discourse’ and ‘social practices discourse’. Also, while ‘skills discourse’ comprised parts of the participants’ perspectives, none of them considered explicit teaching of linguistic features and patterns as part of their writing task design practice. In contrast, the design of tasks indicated Functional Approaches and Communicative Approaches pertaining to ‘the social practices discourse’. Moreover, the perspectives of one participant from the discipline reflected Ivanič’s ‘sociopolitical discourse’, taking into consideration the importance of linguistic choices in determining the writer’s social position.
Conclusion This study highlights the importance of designers’ perspectives on the nature of academic writing in EAP and the disciplinary context. Prior knowledge of various discourses of writing and corresponding teaching approaches will help designers create tasks which incorporate both linguistic and sociocultural aspects. Having revealed commonalities and differences in designers’ perspectives, this study provides an incentive for future research that will effect meaningful dialogues between designers in EAP programs and academic disciplines. One likely possibility is the delivery of workshops where designers from both contexts share ideas and perspectives alongside other scholars specialising in academic writing. Also, based on the findings in both contexts, sociocultural and political aspects have attracted less attention. In line with Ivanič’s view of writing as socio-politically constructed, this study emphasised the importance of this factor. An important pedagogical implication of this study is changing current practice so that students improve their ‘critical language awareness’ (Ivanič, 2004, p. 225). This enriches the designers’ role in promoting ‘social responsibility’ when designing assessment criteria. Alongside features such as accuracy, appropriate utilisation and efficacy, designers can provide students with opportunities to understand why different text types are the way they are-so that they can take a conscious position among alternatives (Ivanič, 2004). Given the limited scope of the study, it is hard to generalise the findings to other EAP and disciplinary contexts. Therefore, further research with larger sample sizes is required to corroborate the findings of this study.
54 English Australia Journal Volume 32 No 2 References
Baker, S. (2013). Transitons and shifing understandings of writng: Building rich pictures of how moving from school to university is experienced through exploraton of students’ discourses of writng. Journal of Academic Language & Learning, 7(2), A35–A49. Bawarshi, A. & Reif, M. (2010). Genre. West Lafayete, Ind.: Parlor Press. Counsell, J. (2011). How efectvely and consistently do internatonal postgraduate students apply the writng strategies they have been taught in a generic skills-based course to their subsequent discipline-based studies? Journal of Academic Language & Learning, 5(1), A1–A17. Gardiner, J. (2010). Student perceptons of the writng skill transfer from genre-based direct entry programs to university courses. Retrieved from htp://sydney.edu.au/cet/research/index.shtml Goldsmith, R., & Willey, K. (2016). “It’s not my job to teach writng”: Actvity theory analysis of [invisible] writng practces in the engineering curriculum. Journal of Academic Language & Learning, 10(1), A118–A129. Hyland, K. (2000). Disciplinary discourses. Harlow, England: Longman. Hyland, K. (2007). Genre pedagogy: Language, literacy and L2 writng instructon. Journal of Second Language Writng, 16(3), 148–164. htp://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.jslw.2007.07.005 Ivanič, R. (2004). Discourses of writng and learning to write. Language and Educaton, 18(3), 220–245. htp://dx.doi.org/10.1080/09500780408666877 Lea, M. & Street, B. (1998). Student writng in higher educaton: An academic literacies approach. Studies in Higher Educaton, 23(2), 157–172. htp://dx.doi.org/10.1080/03075079812331380364 Lea, M. & Street, B. (2006). The "Academic Literacies" model: Theory and applicatons. Theory into Practce, 45(4), 368–377. htp://dx.doi.org/10.1207/s15430421tp4504_11 Ong, V. (2014). An investgaton of learning transfer from an EAP pathway program: An academic literacies perspectve. University of New South Wales, Educaton, 727–753. Ramoroka, B. (2012). Teaching academic writng for the disciplines: How far can we be specifc in an EAP writng course?. ELR, 1(2). htp://dx.doi.org/10.5430/elr.v1n2p33 Street, B. (1997). The Implicatons of the ‘New Literacy Studies' for literacy educaton. English in Educaton, 31(3), 45–59. htp://dx.doi.org/10.1111/j.1754-8845.1997.tb00133.x Street, B. (2005). At last: Recent applicatons of New Literacy Studies in educatonal
Volume 32 No 2 English Australia Journal 55 contexts. Research in the Teaching of English, 39(4), 417–423. Wolfe, J., Olson, B., & Wilder, L. (2014). Knowing what we know about writng in the disciplines: A new approach to teaching for transfer in FYC. The WAC Journal, 25, 42–77.
Elaheh Gharesoufoo has recently completed a Master of Research (Applied Linguistcs) where she developed an interest in research on academic writng. She has many years of ESL/EFL teaching experience.
56 English Australia Journal Volume 32 No 2 CLASSROOM TALK
‘Classroom Talk’ is a space for teachers, trainers and managers to share new ideas, actvites and tools. It aims to inspire readers to refect on or experiment with their classroom practce. If you would like to contribute, please contact the Classroom Talk Editor: [email protected]
Using debates as an engaging assessment task in Academic English courses
Karen McRae
Designing an engaging curriculum and daily lessons is an ongoing endeavour for learning designers and teachers – this was one our objectives as our college underwent a large scale curriculum review project in early 2016. Unfortunately, imagination can at times run dry when creating assessment tasks, and educators often reluctantly revert to traditional essays, reports and presentations. Whilst writing tasks are an integral part of Academic English courses, it is possible to distance ourselves from clichéd oral presentations. At our tertiary institution, debates have recently been incorporated into the summative assessment of the Academic Communication Diploma units, and students have demonstrated a higher degree of engagement and motivation when conducting this task. The main drawback in the previous model was that students often dealt with their oral presentation in the same manner they prepared their assignments: they wrote lengthy paragraphs on PowerPoint slides, often directly copied and pasted from their assignments and simply read them out loud. Several students lacked creativity and energy, and their performances were quite robotic, which at times exasperated teachers as well as the audience. Worst of all, numerous participants did not properly satisfy the task criteria and, inevitably, the unit outcomes.
Volume 32 No 2 English Australia Journal 57 Our solution was to experiment with introducing old-school debating. While debates may be popular in local high schools, they are less common in ESL institutions since they are often considered too challenging for non-native speakers. However, with appropriate preparation and structure, once debates replaced oral presentations in our international classrooms, we noticed a significant shift from passive presenters to a more active and dynamic involvement. In this article I will outline the framework followed, the set-up and preparation undertaken, outcomes observed, as well as further tips and possible modifications.
Debates overview: A formal and weighted assessment task Debates are now part of a compulsory 13-week Academic Communication subject taken in the first session of our Diploma courses and they carry 10% of the unit’s final score. Students are given a controversial statement specific to their discipline of study to ensure interest (Lee, 2012), and they conduct their debate in small groups of three to four students during Week 10. Participants develop arguments to support their team’s side (for or against), and then present them in a formal 30-minute debate in class. The assigned team captains firstly introduce the speakers, their topic, position and main points; this is then followed by a strictly monitored delivery of the teams’ arguments respectively, with each speaker directly addressing the opposing team and the audience for approximately four minutes. It is imperative that students support their points with research, examples, statistical data and referencing. To avoid unfair results, marks are given on an individual basis but team effort and collaboration is taken into consideration.
Preparing for debates Watching debates on YouTube as well as revising formal phrases to introduce and conclude arguments helps students to develop ideas. It is important to introduce debates late enough in the term to ensure the development of academic language and skills. Prior to the introduction of debates, our students would have already reviewed how to:
• read, write, listen and speak critcally
• fnd reliable sources and reference
• summarise and paraphrase
• support an argument academically
• be a confdent public speaker
58 English Australia Journal Volume 32 No 2 One of the most important points to note when using debates as an assessment task is that it is beneficial to conduct them as formally as possible. Students seem to take the task more seriously as soon as they are informed that the classroom furniture will be arranged differently on the day, clearly delineating the two teams at the front facing an audience, with a timekeeper in the middle. The prescribed structure of the debate itself is of equal importance to the physical organisation of the room.
Outcomes so far Improvements have been noted in group collaboration as well as in overall preparation for the assessment. Most students work closely together as each presenter has a specific role (Dillenbourg, 1999) in developing the team’s arguments and they strive to deliver a better performance to keep the entire quality of the debate high for the sake of both parties (Drbseh, 2015; Gardner, 1985). Teachers are thrilled with how certain students take advantage of being in the spotlight and deliver outstanding performances. Regrettably, however, there are still a few students who miss some preparatory sessions, try to improvise on the day of the assessment, and therefore, perform quite poorly. This is an issue that we anticipate to be reduced considerably once we link a percentage of the assessment’s score to a compulsory one-page poster submitted a week before debates are due – this would briefly outline each speaker’s points and a include list of references. Students are not only asked to defend a position, but they also have to try and win the argument (Yang, Zhang, & Wang, 2009). This competitive element seems to have triggered more interest in the task, and most students try their best to find solid evidence to support their argument while also presenting it compellingly (Gardner & Lambert, 1972). Another factor that has had a positive effect is that participants have to carefully listen to the opposing team to be able to ‘fight back’ with a rebuttal. Additionally, the members of the audience also have to listen attentively and participate by voting for their preferred team at the end. Students are asked to give their feedback on weekly content, assessment and delivery of the unit in an anonymous online survey, and several have listed debates as one of the most enjoyable and memorable activities of the unit. In retrospect, a number of students also value the fact that they are able to review useful academic skills without having to write yet another assignment. Positive comments have also been collected from the Learner Evaluation of Unit surveys, while other encouraging testimonials have been provided during one-on-one interviews with students.
Possible pitfalls and modifications The majority of the students have responded positively to having debates as an
Volume 32 No 2 English Australia Journal 59 oral assessment task. Naturally, introvert students need to work harder at public speaking since they have to build confidence to present an argument and persuade an audience without relying on the shelter of wordy PowerPoint slides. It is worth noting, however, that, some participants do feel slightly more at ease participating in a debate because it is more of a group effort, compared to the ‘on-stage performance’ of a presentation. Students are encouraged to avoid scripts but instead prepare bullet-point notes on palm cards to guide them, allowing them to make regular eye-contact with the audience. Currently we have found it helpful to have a policy that debates are not accompanied by any slides but in future sessions we might allow students to incorporate related photographs or pictures projected in class to enrich the message delivered – if wordy slides creep in, penalties could be applied. In order to help students gain more confidence, we trialled a mock task a week in advance, filming the groups while following the same classroom layout and debate structure that simulates the real assessment task (Garcia-Carbonell, Rising, Montero & Watts, 2001). This was successful as it helped students see how they sound and look from the audience’s perspective (note, however, that authorisation to film students would need to be sought). One-on-one practice with teachers and advisors can also be held if necessary, and advising students to film themselves on smart phones/ tablets to review their body language, pronunciation and pace is also an option. To ensure students respect the formalities of the debates, teachers might consider a formal dress code for the presenters, request all speakers to stand up, and to formally address the audience and fellow debaters. Having a guest teacher to assess students on the day, or perhaps co-mark student performance with the class teacher, may reinforce the formality of the event and could also lead to a more impartial and standardised score.
Conclusion After running debates over three consecutive sessions with a goal to increase student motivation and performance, a comparative study is currently being conducted. Initial reports are highly encouraging and we hope that further analyses will indicate a correlation between levels of engagement and overall unit results.
References Dillenbourg, P. (1999). Collaborative-learning: Cognitive and computational approaches. Oxford: Elsevier.
60 English Australia Journal Volume 32 No 2 Drbseh, M. (2015). Motivation and attitudes towards learning English as a foreign language: A study of the Middle East Arab University students at Leeds University in UK. International Journal of Scientific and Research Publications, 5(12), 236–257. Garcia-Carbonell, A., Rising, B., Montero, B., & Watts, F. (2001). Simulation/gaming and the acquisition of communicative competence in another language. Simulation & Gaming, 32(4), 481–491. Gardner, R.C. (1985). Social psychology and language learning: The role of attitudes and motivation. London: Edward Arnold. Gardner, R. C., & Lambert, W. (1972). Attitudes and motivation in second language learning. Rowley, Mass: Newbury House Publishers, Inc. Lee, H. (2012). ESL learners’ motivation and task engagement in technology enhanced language learning contexts. Washington: Department of Teaching and Learning, Washington State University. Yang, Y., Zhang, H., & Wang, J. (2009). The relationship between motivational intensity and achievement: Implications for the learning of English by Chinese students. Asian Social Science, Canadian Center of Science and Education, 5(10), 88–93. Retrieved from http://www.ccsenet.org/journal/index.php/ass/article/view/2546/3523
Karen McRae is the Program Convenor for Academic Communicaton at the Sydney Insttute of Business and Technology (SIBT, Navitas). She has taught various General ESL and Academic English courses in Australia and Europe over the past 16 years.
Volume 32 No 2 English Australia Journal 61 Helping students to form and express opinions
Laurel Acton
In EAP classrooms, students are expected to formulate a response to opinion-based questions using logical argument. However, for many students these skills, typically conducted in pair- or groupwork situations, are culturally unfamiliar and perhaps even threatening. In my classes, which have a predominantly Chinese cohort, I used to find that several students were reluctant to even engage with oral tasks that I knew were ‘good for them’. This lack of participation progressively increased my frustration levels. Why wouldn’t they at least have a go? The kinds of student behaviours inducing my feeling of impotence included the following: • general silence when I atempted to elicit a response within their knowledge feld • oral responses in short noun phrases, without explanaton • an unwillingness to speak in pair actvites • a painfully long tme lag before a student voiced an opinion (if at all) • in group discussions, a series of unlinked, discrete statements with a failure to respond directly to the point being made In order to address these problems, I engaged in an Action Research project aimed at bridging the gap in this area between the educational backgrounds of my students and the Australian tertiary system. This article will outline some background reading which informed my research, the general teaching framework I adopted, and the most effective activities which emerged from the process.
Influences behind the project I adopted a Vygotskian approach, based on ‘the joint construction of knowledge . . . within an apprentice/mentor role’ (Sharpe, 2008, p. 132). Working within the ‘zone of proximal development’ (ZPD), where students can perform a task only with expert help, my goal was to ‘allow [the students] to go beyond previous experiences when planning future action’ (Vygotsky, 1978, p. 28). This involved not only scaffolding of
62 English Australia Journal Volume 32 No 2 language and logical argument, but also affective elements, which Vygotsky argued were inextricably linked with cognitive ones (Hammond & Gibbons, 2005). A primary aim in this respect was to free up the energy of some students who presented as trapped in immobility. As these problems generally occurred in classes which had a high proportion of Chinese students, I deepened my understanding of the pressures these particular students face by doing some wider reading. One article I found especially useful was Peter Guy’s ‘Chinese Studying Abroad: Putting Square pegs into Round Holes’ (2015). This is a long-time observer’s account of the socio-historical context and cultural reality faced by Chinese high school students. As a result of reading this text, my impatience with the students transformed into compassion, and I would recommend this article to any teacher seeking to understand their Chinese students better. Finally, in designing the activities below, I adapted dialogue-based tasks sourced from the texts Communicative Activities for EAP (Guse, 2011) and Keep Talking (Klippel, 1984).
Basic approach Over a three-cycle project with four different classes of upper-intermediate students, I sought to: • provide informaton and explain opposing views on an issue before asking for students’ opinion – a culturally familiar lecture format which aimed to compensate for the frequently poor general knowledge of these students • create ‘controlled chaos’ in the room, with physical movement and upbeat music accompanying oral tasks in order to establish a relaxing, enjoyable atmosphere instead of the the formal, ordered tone of many EAP classes • give students practce at refutng arguments, regardless of their actual positon with the aim of developing skills in logical thinking and removing any perceived pressure to hold one viewpoint • drill language models at the tme of use, while students were ‘on the dance foor’, in order to facilitate transiton to the practce phase • maintain a playful and supportve environment in the discussion phase to encourage experimentaton by hesitant students. The success of this approach was apparent from classroom observation of the much more animated discussions that ensued, and confirmed by the high ratings and positive comments provided in student feedback surveys.
Volume 32 No 2 English Australia Journal 63 A lesson sequence This series of steps, which I repeated and refined throughout my research, proved to be one of the most successful in generating lively group discussion. Steps 6, 8, 9 and 10 are best accompanied by music.
1. Begin with a closed queston e.g., ‘Should we use more nuclear energy?’
2. Give a mini-lecture (I used Powerpoint) organised around aspects of the issue e.g., safety, efect on the environment, cost. Each aspect should include ideas and evidence supportng both sides. For example, ‘With regard to cost, nuclear power plants are expensive to build, but they produce low-cost energy once they’re established.’
3. Give each group a set of sentence cards to organise these ideas into arguments for and against the queston posed at the outset. Completon of a worksheet, while an alternatve, is less interactve and kinaesthetc.
4. Ask students to stand in a line, representng their positon in relaton to the queston.
5. Drill ‘agree’ language.
6. Get students to practse this language with someone standing nearby (who therefore has a similar opinion) and give their main reason.
7. Drill ‘disagree’ language.
8. Similar to Step 6, but talking to a partner with an opposing viewpoint who is standing in a diferent positon in the line.
9. Group all the students according to the aspect they consider most important, such as safety or cost. Students again exchange views with this small group, perhaps discovering that in fact, this ‘value’ can generate strong feelings yet produce opposing viewpoints.
10. Only now, put students in a small group away from their usual seat and ask them to discuss the topic.
Other useful opinion-based activities These tasks were also rated highly by my students: • For and Against: Give each student a sentence with an opinion statement. They are then paired with another student and have to defend that positon, while their partner has to argue against it. This works best if the students
64 English Australia Journal Volume 32 No 2 already have sufcient knowledge of the topic (e.g., as a follow-up to the discussion lesson above) and if the teacher gives feedback on use of logic in brief exchanges by one or two volunteer pairs in front of the class. • Kahoot! Survey: This is a free, easy-to-use piece of sofware which simply requires you to input a few opinion questons. Students are challenged to respond quickly with an agree/disagree click on their mobile phone. Afer the numbers for and against appear on the screen, there is an opportunity to ask for the students’ reasons and explain to the students any logical faws. • Home Chat: This proved useful for more reserved or weak speakers, and for those who fnd it difcult to speak while simultaneously thinking of ideas. Create a transcript of someone answering an opinion queston e.g., ‘Are you happy with your mobile phone, and why?’ in a response of about one minute, including typical features of spoken language: conversaton fllers, pauses, points with informal linkers, fragments, repetton and phrases to include the listener (‘Know what I mean?’). Elicit identfcaton of these features in the model, then create a table with similar questons. Tell students to speak for one minute (then two) on their choice of the topics fve tmes a week in the safe privacy of their bedroom. They should try to use the language features and indicate completon in the table with the date it was done. Check and discuss progress with them each week.
Conclusion I believe that helping students to form and express opinions is an important way to ease their transition to higher education in Australia. Greater rigour in their use of logical argument developed through oral activities should also improve their writing of persuasive tasks. Moreover, this approach to teaching discussion may be effective in transforming the classroom into a more dynamic, fun and interesting place.
References Guse, J. (2011). Communicative activities for EAP. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Guy, P. (2015). Chinese studying abroad: Putting square pegs into round holes. Retrieved from http://www.academia.edu/12097276/Chinese_Studying_Abroad_ Putting_Square_Pegs_inot_Round_Holes Hammond, J. & Gibbons, P. (2005). Putting scaffolding to work: The contribution of scaffolding in articulating ESL education. Prospect, 20(1), 6–30.
Volume 32 No 2 English Australia Journal 65 Klippel, F. (1984). Keep talking. Avon: Cambridge University Press. Sharpe, T. (2008). How can teacher talk support learning? Linguistics and Education, 19, 132–148. Vygotsky, L. (1978). Mind in society: The development of higher psychological processes. Cambridge, Massachusetts: Harvard University Press.
Laurel Acton teaches Academic English at UTS Insearch Sydney. She has taught a wide range of students across the ESL/EFL felds throughout her 30-year career. Laurel has a partcular interest in the impact of culture on language learning.
66 English Australia Journal Volume 32 No 2 Exploring academic articles with lower level students
Gerhard Erasmus
Reading academic articles in another language is never an easy task. It is even more challenging when you are not at an upper-Intermediate language level or above. I was recently tasked with teaching an ‘English for Socialising’ class at an accreditation body in Taiwan and part of the required curriculum was to cover academic articles about higher education accreditation. The students were mostly at CEFR A2 and B1 and my initial feeling was that covering an academic article with them would be near impossible. What follows is how I approached this challenge.
Assumptions, needs and course design As the learners chose to be in the class I assumed their motvaton would be high. This did turn out to be accurate and they were very actve in and out of class. Atendance was high for a business group and their engagement with the vocabulary tasks was very high. In terms of language, I assumed that they would be somewhat familiar with accreditation-related lexis as they worked in the industry, but they would more than likely be unfamiliar with lexical items that are not directly related to accreditation and they might struggle with grammatical complexity. Having not read academic articles in English, they would be unfamiliar with the layout of academic articles. Also considering that there were at least 10 pages per article, it would have been very difficult to cover an entire article in a class without the learners losing interest or struggling. This resulted in my decision to cover lexical items based on frequency in the articles. They also needed to be able to follow the article as a whole, meaning we had to cover grammatical complexity and article structure. The original course design had the last two weeks of an eight-week course set aside for these articles. I decided to spend 15–30 minutes of our 90-minute weekly lessons on the articles rather than the last two weeks. This turned out to be quite successful.
Lexical items I selected two of three potential articles and converted them from PDF to Word. I then put the articles into a word frequency counter. There are several available
Volume 32 No 2 English Australia Journal 67 online, but I preferred the WriteWords Phrase Frequency Counter (www.writewords. org.uk/phrase_count.asp) as it allowed me to search for word frequency as well as phrase frequency. A simple ‘copy and paste’ to and from the site gave me a word list and phrase list I could start with. To fine-tune the list I had to compare phrases with individual words as many of the frequently appearing words in the phrases could be deleted from the single word list. As an example, three words appearing very frequently (in excess of 400 times) were accreditation, education and higher; however, the phrase higher education accreditation appeared more than 100 times. I combined frequently occurring collocations and phrases and then added words that appeared very frequently, but not so much in phrases, and made the final word list. After deleting function words that didn’t form a clear part of a collocation, I ended up with a list of around 50 items meaning I could assign between 8–10 words a week. The students used this word list to translate the words and phrases and input them into Memrise (www.memrise.com), an online flashcard tool, which can be used as both a website and an app. Registration is free and it is very easy to use. I also preferred translation, rather than synonyms or pictures, as the complexity of the lexical items made translation easier and it led into the next stage (see below, ‘From lexis to sentences’). However, I had the benefit of dealing with a monolingual class and I am fairly proficient in their L1 which made it more workable. With multilingual classes, this can easily be replaced with definitions, pictures or synonyms and it is also possible to use other online flashcard tools. Alternatively, students in multilingual classes with a shared L1 could potentially work together to make word lists in Memrise. As homework, the students had a simple competition to see who got the most points on Memrise and I offered rewards (such as small chocolates) to the winners. This was remarkably successful as the phone app allowed them to review the vocabulary whenever they had a moment or two to spare.
From lexis to sentences I also had to test their comprehension of the words to ensure this was working, and I stumbled onto an idea to both review the vocabulary and deal with grammatical complexity. When I started the class, I had a fairly heavy workload and wanted to find the easiest way to make gapfills or crosswords, as what often takes up the most time is the writing of clues or sentences. As I already had the text of the academic articles in Word format, I simply searched for each word or phrase in the Word document. This in turn highlighted the items and I could copy and paste an entire sentence from the article for a gapfill or crossword clue.
68 English Australia Journal Volume 32 No 2 After completing the gapfills or crosswords, students were given a few minutes to translate the phrases in small groups and bet on who had the most accurate translation before comparing translations. This contrastive analysis allows learners to notice differences in phrasing between English and their L1, and they also had the opportunity to negotiate which group had the most accurate translation of each sentence. While it might be problematic to implement this strategy in a class with many different L1s, pairing of students with the same or similar L1s could overcome the bulk of the problem. Incidentally, I used this idea and a few other activities from Phillip Kerr’s Translation and Own-Language Activities (Cambridge University Press, 2014) and would strongly recommend this as there are many ideas that can be easily adapted for the multilingual classroom. In my opinion, with A2 and B1 level learners, translation was a key component of the success of the project as it supported their reading of the articles by giving them phrases and sentences which they were already familiar with. It meant that when students encountered the sentences in later reading of the article, there was already some awareness of the difference in phrasing and this scaffolding of the eventual reading of the article was an important factor in my choosing to work with translation of sentences.
Article structure To familiarise students with the structure, I made a worksheet with all the headings and sub-headings from one of the articles. In groups they guessed in which order these headings appeared and then checked it against the actual article. This was repeated with the second article and we then briefly compared the articles in terms of structure to highlight similarities. Next I gave them a list of numbers from the articles and they had to find the number and say what each referred to. This scanning task meant that although the entire article was not covered, they had to read smaller parts of it. This reading, coupled with the translation work of earlier lessons, meant they were more familiar with the overall structure of the article and where to find things, and had begun looking at the meaning, though they were yet to look at it in real depth.
Dealing with content in more depth I wanted the learners to interpret the meaning of the article rather than just read it and answer comprehension questions. For this I had to find a way that would allow students to read and negotiate meaning of the article as well as to incorporate their working life and experience. I decided on a short presentation to meet this aim. In small groups, students were told to use the headings as a guide and then make a PowerPoint presentation where each heading was represented by a slide. The
Volume 32 No 2 English Australia Journal 69 negotiation and discussion that followed allowed a deeper reading of the article and group members who were more familiar with the content and lexis helped weaker ones when deciding on what to put on the slides and comprehending the content. They were also allowed to include their own ideas, but needed to be sure that if they contradicted the article that they should support their point of view. This was by far the hardest part for the students as there was a lot of reading and discussion that stretched their grammatical and lexical knowledge, but the resulting slides showed a fairly good understanding of the content. We had unfortunately run out of time when these slides were finished and only one group had the chance to present, but their presentation showed a good understanding of the article and there was a short discussion of the presentation by the group before we ended the course.
Conclusion Overall, I felt this approach led to a successful outcome in a challenging situation and would be confident in attempting to repeat this with another group of learners. There were a few key concepts that made this work. First, all the students came from the same working/academic environment, so what would be considered unfamiliar lexis to students from other industries was familiar to them. Secondly, the selection of target lexis was directly related to frequency in the articles, which meant that the learners’ eventual reading of the articles could be supported by focused lexical instruction as well as by the translation activities related to sentences taken directly from the texts. Finally, a step-by-step approach to a genre unfamiliar to them allowed them some time to come to grips with the genre and also helped to structure their presentations. The presentation meant that they could work in groups to gain a deeper understanding of the article and its content. I am hopeful that a few ideas in here will help other teachers overcome the challenge of academic reading with lower level students and open up the challenging world of academic reading to lower level students with a principled and workable approach.
Gerhard Erasmus has 10 years ELT management experience including being the Director of Studies at a language centre in Taipei, Taiwan, and is actvely involved in teacher training and teacher development. He has authored both textbooks and teacher resource books as well as co-authored the ebook Brainstorming with Hall Houston. His main area of interest in ELT is teacher development including contnuous professional development.
70 English Australia Journal Volume 32 No 2 TEN QUESTIONS10 Qs
indsay Clandfield is probably best known as the one of the authors of Macmillan’s Global and Straightforward Lcoursebook series and as one of the editors of the excellent Delta Teacher Development book series. But did you know he’s also a fabulous ‘ideas’ person who’s involved in everything from online publishing collectives to podcasting, with the odd zombie apocalypse thrown in? In this enjoyable interview, Lindsay shares some of his projects, passions and peeves with us, as well as some tips for training online and getting started in for materials writing. Lindsay will be joining us for the 2017 English Lindsay Australia Conference in Adelaide – read to the end for a sneak peek Clandfeld at what to expect. There might be zombies!
Volume 32 No 2 English Australia Journal 71 1. The first time I remember seeing your name it was as a competition winner on OneStopEnglish! Was that how you got started in materials writing? Yes, it was. It was one of the first ways I got into materials writing anyway. The Onestopenglish Lesson Share competton was a great way for me to get notced back in those days, before people could easily build their own websites and blogs. I also had Q1started out by writng some material for a local magazine called iT’s for Teachers. 2. What advice would you give to would-be materials writers? I’d say start of by making a workshop/talk about them, then try to present this at a local conference. That’s where you can meet publishers and begin networking. You can also write and ofer to do guest blogposts and the like for any organisaton or publisher you like. You can of course pitch an idea to a publisher, but in my experience this doesn’t Q2work out so well. 3. The round has become a popular, go-to source of short, highly practical texts for language teachers (including several reviewed in this issue). How did this evolve? The round originated as a blog idea in the autumn of 2010. Luke Meddings and I were thinking about doing a blog focusing on critcal and subversive stmulus – the kind of stuf Q3that doesn’t ft into the major publishers’ catalogues. The more we talked I’d say that teacher training in about it, the more interesting the idea terms of observation and feedback became – and the more on teaching is rather hard if not almost it seemed to suggest impossible to do online. But a lot of the something more than a blog. In fact, we started best online stuff happening in ELT is in to wonder if the blog the area of teacher training. could become a book. But how would a book like that ever get a look-in from the major publishers? Another conversaton around the same tme centred around the sheer quality of some educatonal blogs – ofen writen by unpublished authors. In fact, we started to wonder if some blogs could become books. But how would books like that ever get a look-in from the major publishers? Then it hit us – maybe the major publishers weren’t the right place to be looking. Weren’t some authors already self-publishing? And wouldn’t that be a perfect way to bridge the gap between blogs and books?
72 English Australia Journal Volume 32 No 2 It’s been six years now, and the world of self-publishing has grown. There are other sites now with teachers’ e-books, but the round has kept growing. There are now more than 20 ttles on there, and most of them cost the same as a cofee and a pastry! Plus 90% of the money goes right to the authors on the round, the rest goes to the site’s upkeep. So when you buy an e-book there, the author is getng most of the money.
4. Your ExLT project addresses ‘learning English for more unusual and extreme purposes’ – can you give us an overview of what this is? ExLT stands for Extreme Language Teaching. This is a more recent project I began with Robert Campbell (who, curiously, was the owner of the magazine I menton above that gave me one of my early breaks in writng). We started by writng a sort of tongue-in-cheek Q4coursebook called English for the Zombie Apocalypse. This was followed by English for the Alien Invasion. We are now self-publishing diferent kinds of cool e-books, games and actvites for the adventure-minded teacher and students. The idea is that these are all ELT actvites in the horror, sci-f and adventure genres which we both love. We’re doing reviews of other things at that site that interest us too, things like board games and video games which are not for language learning but that could be adapted.
5. A self-confessed podcast addict, you’ve been running your own ELT podcast, The TEFL Commute, since 2015. What’s involved in putting an episode together? Oh yeah, I’m a total podcast addict now. The TEFL Commute is a show I host with Shaun Wilden. But the producton is more done by him and James Taylor. They are both really good at that kind of stuf, I just come on and blabber for half an hour or so. We choose a Q5topic to talk about, research it a bit, maybe invite a guest and record our conversatons on Skype. Then James and Shaun put it together, adding sound efects and music. We call it a podcast for language teachers that isn’t about language teaching (although the topic will come up). We talk about lots of stuf: stafrooms, why teachers love statonery, music, songs, flms about teaching . . . lots of fun stuf.
6. You seem to be someone who always has a new project on the go – can you tell us what’s you’re next looking forward to working on? I may be startng work on an excitng new course series. The last one I fnished was Global back in 2011 (for Macmillan). Since then I’ve done a few bits and pieces for coursebooks but I feel like it might be tme for me to do another series. I’m also fnishing up co-authoring a Q6couple of books for teachers (I’ll tell you about this below). But I’m probably most keen to do some more adventure-type material for ExLT. My dream would be to one day develop a real board game or good video game for language learners.
Volume 32 No 2 English Australia Journal 73 7. Some might say that teacher training doesn't lend itself well to online learning. As someone who does a lot of training online, how would you respond to this? I’d say that teacher training in terms of observaton and feedback on teaching is rather hard if not almost impossible to do online. But a lot of the best online stuf happening in ELT is in the area of teacher training. In terms of getng input, language awareness, Q7sharing ideas and doing refecton and acton research I think all of that can be efectvely done online. I would add that this does require the presence of a teacher trainer in the virtual space though!
8. In addition to online training, you also use social media for professional purposes – what do you see as the pros and cons of this way of connecting? I sometmes feel a love-hate relatonship with social media. I think many of us do. It’s great to keep people connected, but it also tends to bring out a really ugly and silly side of us at tmes. I try to avoid being drawn into fghts or debates in social media now, it just Q8exhausts me. Plus the past year has seen my whole newsfeed convulsed a few tmes by big politcal things (Brexit, Trump . . . ) and it almost becomes a place where if I’m not careful I’ll just wallow in misery. It’s when the personal and the professional (and the politcal) all overlap in that space that things can get very difcult, on a personal level for me.
9. What ‘issue’ in ELT is high on your radar at the moment and why? I’m fnding myself increasingly critcal at tmes of technology, even though I’m a total tech geek. The whole issue of edtech and automaton and how that might be playing out in terms of teachers’ working lives on my radar, as well as all the hype we’ve been subjected to over the past 10 years. Recently, I also fnd myself wondering about the future of the Q9whole feld of ELT, in a world where we are increasingly facing movements that want to face inwards and not globally. How does that translate into teaching and learning foreign languages over the long run?
10. You'll be a guest speaker at the English Australia Conference in September 2017 – can you give us a sneak peek at what you’ll be talking about? I’m not quite sure yet, but one thing I’ll be talking about for sure is the area of interacton online in language classes. I’ve just fnished a book of actvites on the topic with Jill Hadfeld (for Cambridge University Press, out in 2017). We discuss what we mean by Q10meaningful interacton in the online space, and have writen more than 50 actvites that can be done in forums, Facebook groups or in messaging systems like Whatsapp. I’m keen to share these with teachers, because they are really a lot of fun to do! Also, I always enjoy the chance to teach a lesson from English for the Zombie Apocalypse, to
74 English Australia Journal Volume 32 No 2 discuss actually how this kind of ‘unreal world’ material can be useful in the real world of the language class. Needless to say, I’m very excited to be coming to the Conference. It will be my frst tme in Australia!
Lindsay Clandfeld is an award-winning writer, teacher, teacher trainer and internatonal speaker in the feld of English language teaching.
www.lindsayclandfeld.com
If you would like to write an article in Classroom Talk for the English Australia Journal, please contact: [email protected]
Volume 32 No 2 English Australia Journal 75 REVIEWS
100 Activities for Fast Finishers
Rachael Harris The round, 2015
Reviewed by Bridgid Seymour-East
The title of this e-book is 100 Activities for Fast Finishers and as an opening note, I would say that while there are 100 activities, they may not all be wholly suitable for fast finishers. The majority of the tasks are fun and engaging, which could potentially be distracting to other learners in the room thus defeating the purpose of the tasks – keeping fast finishers busy whilst allowing the others to carry on working. Admittedly, Harris does explain in her introduction that these activities do work as much more than activities for fast finishers: they are useful as fillers, warmers and even homework. If you approach the book as such, you will reap the rewards. The layout of the book is delightfully simple – a list of 100 ideas formatted in boxes. Each activity has a short title in capital letters followed by an equally short description. For example:
TODAY I learnt … I enjoyed… I’m sure I’ll forget … I need to ask the teacher …
The idea is that you cut these 100 ideas up and place them in a box/bag. Fast finishers can then come up and pull out an activity from the box/bag and do it. The ideas have been divided into four sections; ‘Revision’, ‘Vocab Recall’, ‘Ensuring Variety’ and ‘Brain Strain’. A further suggestion is to colour-code the cut-up tasks, thus allowing
76 English Australia Journal Volume 32 No 2 the teacher more control over the types of activity students do. All in all, a fine idea in theory but ultimately I believe off-putting for ‘slower’ learners, who would be either annoyed or distracted by others at their tables moving on to a ‘fun’ activity. Many of the suggestions may not be revolutionary but it is always useful to be reminded of the classics (for example, ‘Mindmaps’, ‘Make a Poster’, ‘Top Tips’, ‘a Sense Poem’, ‘Desert Island Discsʼ.). I particularly like the activities in the ‘Revision’ section, which I believe would suit the eponymous fast finishers, as well as working brilliantly as class review, for instance:
HIGH FIVE Summarize the lesson, the text, a key idea or process in FIVE words.
The book is also up to date and varied including activities like:
TWEET IT Write a tweet (140 characters) describing today’s lesson.
The ‘Vocab Recall’ section offers activities which allow students to review vocabulary and expand upon it, such as:
ADJECTIVE RECALL How many adjectves can you remember from today’s lesson? What else can they describe?
Other tasks in this section simply require learners to recyle any vocabulary:
SKYSCRAPER How many words can you make using these leters (using each only once)?
The third section, ‘Ensuring Variety’, caters to different types of learners. Tasks involve singing, mind mapping, drawing, rhyming and much more. Finally, the fourth section, ‘Brain Strain’, asks students to think outside the box and may be more conducive to pair or group work. These activities focus less on review or vocabulary and instead require imagination. For example:
BIGGEST FAN Imagine you met your favourite star. What would you ask them?
Volume 32 No 2 English Australia Journal 77 As stated previously, some of these activities may not be new to many teachers, but that doesn’t discount them from being worthy of inclusion, and there is a broad enough range of ideas here to appeal to an array of teaching styles. We all have our tried and tested favourites but it is good to step away from these from time to time. For me, the majority of the activities are snappy, uncomplicated and varied. I dislike fuss, in particular complicated teacher’s instructions, so the simplicity of this e-book works for me. Another major highlight and attraction is its format. Many of us have so many books, yet often so little space, so it is convenient that this book can sit neatly on your computer waiting to be plundered. Overall, this is definitely a worthwhile addition to your box of tricks.
Bridgid Seymour-East is a Senior Teacher at Navitas, Sydney, where she has been working for almost 15 years. She mainly teaches Cambridge Preparaton courses.
78 English Australia Journal Volume 32 No 2 The Cambridge Guide to Blended Learning for Language Teaching
Michael McCarthy (Ed.)
Cambridge University Press, 2016
Reviewed by Vanessa Todd
How important is technology in your teaching role? How do you keep up with new applications of technology for language teaching? How do you know whether the latest software will help your students any more than what you’re currently using? And what do you know about the principles of blended (also called hybrid) learning? The Cambridge Guide to Blended Learning for Language Teaching (hereafter The Guide) aims to address these and related questions. Despite being called a 'guide', it doesn't contain teaching tips or advice on which software to use. Rather, with contributions by well-known researchers and practitioners, The Guide presents research and case studies about second language acquisition, e-learning, classroom teaching and teacher professional development. Running throughout is the message that, whether online or face-to-face, good teaching must begin with principles rather than technology. The Guide is divided into five sections, each with an overview by the editor, so you can zero in on chapters which are of most interest to you. Theory is complemented by examples of blended learning programs, which range from small initiatives by individual teachers, to large projects run by well-resourced educational companies. Each chapter concludes with suggested readings and discussion questions encouraging the reader to explore the topic further and to reflect on their own teaching practice. Section 1, ‘Connecting Theories and Blended Learning’, outlines issues important in second language acquisition and classroom interaction. Chapters provide useful updates on current research into these topics (if it’s been a few years since you’ve studied), or would be a useful introduction to principles of language teaching (if your training was in something else). Of particular interest is Scott Thornbury’s chapter,
Volume 32 No 2 English Australia Journal 79 which contains 12 observations about second language acquisition which could be used as a yardstick to evaluate technologies. Lacking from Section 1, however, is a chapter specifically discussing the features and issues of blended learning. Various aspects of blended learning are described in later chapters, yet the book seems to jump over such questions as: What might be some of the principles for combining face-to-face and online activities? How can a teacher evaluate the effectiveness of the blend? How can blended learning support current educational trends (e.g., The Cambridge Guide to flipped learning, discovery learning, problem-based learning, collaborative Blended learning)? This gap becomes especially evident when reading a later chapter Learning explaining key dimensions of mobile for Language learning (Chapter 13). Teaching Section 2, ‘Implications for Teaching’, moves from language acquisition and classroom teaching to the benefits Edited by Michael McCarthy of delivering some learning activities online. Johnson and Marsh explain the rationale for using a ‘flipped classroom’ (assigning content-heavy material to be completed online so that class time can be used for interactive learning) in a Laureate University language program. Comas-Quinn outlines the benefits of an online training/professional development program for teachers at the Open University, UK, in which teachers are widely dispersed and the logistics of face-to-face training are problematic. For me, Section 3, ‘Rethinking Learner Interaction’, was where The Guide started to get really interesting, as it explores the implications and potential of online tools for learning. Hojnacki demonstrates that careful design of online language activities (in a university-level language course) can actually increase learners’ oral output. Mishan shows the evolving nature of curriculum design thanks to Web 2.0 tools (software that allows not only the creation of static materials (such as PDFs or images), but also for collaboration and interaction (such as wikis or videoconferencing). And the section on ‘Pedagogical Implications’ at the end of Lazar’s chapter would be a useful guide for anyone considering (re)designing a course, or simply integrating technology into existing programs.
80 English Australia Journal Volume 32 No 2 The case studies in Section 4 chart the thinking involved in the design of several online/technology-rich programs. The cases described are the delightfully quirky French Kitchen Project (think: a kitchen which talks back); a program for pre-service language teachers; and the redesign of a popular paper-based textbook series (Cambridge's Touchstone) to include online activities (the latter an interesting description of the processes involved in a large-scale project). A consistent theme of this section is the importance of training and supporting teachers who deliver blended learning programs for the success of the program. Section 5, ‘The future of Blended Learning’, examines several important trends from a more theoretical perspective. Dudeney and Hockly give a rich description of mobile learning, illustrated by some simple activities that you could implement in your classroom this week. In contrast, the design of adaptive learning systems (learning activities designed to assess the learner’s abilities and present tasks pitched to an optimal level of difficulty), explained by San Pedro and Baker, is probably beyond the development capacity of small institutions, but an important concept to understand. Editor Michael McCarthy’s final chapter pulls together and builds upon key ideas from throughout the book and may be worth reading first if you are short on time. One topic that could have been included is online (computer) games, a major form of online learning at the moment. Would this book be useful for you? As mentioned, although it’s called a guide, it isn’t a how-to book containing lesson plans you could use tomorrow. However, you’ll probably find ideas for teaching activities among the many case studies, while the focus on pedagogy and theory will give you a more principled approach to the way you use technology in your teaching. In particular, The Guide will be of interest to curriculum developers or anyone tasked with evaluating or purchasing technology for an institution.
Vanessa Todd is a Learning Adviser at Macquarie University, New South Wales, where she designs and evaluates actvites (online and face-to-face) developing English language and academic literacy. She’s also interested in assessment, data visualisaton and gamifcaton.
Volume 32 No 2 English Australia Journal 81 The Round ‘Minis’ Series
Richer Speaking by Sandy Millin Logic Activities by David Boughton Moral Dilemmas by Lindsay Clandfield Brainstorming by Gerhard Erasmus & Hall Houston Energising EAP by Meredith MacAulay
The round, 2016, 2017
Many readers will be familiar with e-books from ‘the round’ (they don’t capitalise!). This independent publishing collective aims to provide quality materials at a fair price and to create more opportunities for ELT professionals to share innovative ideas. Since 2016, the round has been releasing a series of ‘Minis’, which are, as they put it, ‘small books with small prices but big value.’ The books are certainly small — the longest title in the series only has 46 pages — and the prices are certainly low — under US$1 at the time of writing. As for value, you decide. Five out of the six current ‘Minis’ are reviewed here.
Richer Speaking
Sandy Millin
Reviewed by Finlay McCall Overall, I found Richer Speaking a useful resource for further exploiting opportunities for communication in the ELT classroom. It will appeal to teachers who like exploring different ways of presenting and carrying out the traditional speaking activities which often appear in coursebooks, such as discussions, role-plays and interviews. The text is divided into four sections: ‘Preparing to Speak’, ‘Adding Repetition’, ‘Extending Speech’ and ‘Having a Reason to Listen’, and each section includes three techniques for further exploitation of the coursebook materials. For example, in ‘Preparing to Speak’, the first technique suggests that students prepare a mini- biography of the character they will play in a roleplay. Richer Speaking then provides a list of materials and the step-by-step instructions to apply the technique. There is also a section for possible follow-up activities. While it could be argued that many of these activities have been suggested or written about as stand-alone classroom
82 English Australia Journal Volume 32 No 2 exercises, I feel its focus on the extension and exploitation of existing materials is an original concept, particularly in the vein of pushing students to do more with language in the classroom than follow instructions from a coursebook. I have tried several of these techniques in my academic English classes and find them very useful for setting up, carrying out and getting more from speaking activities. The focus on communication and goal driven tasks, as well the inclusion of gamification and drama techniques, means that my students often didn’t realise they were performing discussion tasks at all and were instead enjoying themselves. I also really like the uncluttered and easy-to-read prose. The layout and focus on zero-preparation means that you can skim through the techniques and locate an activity to suit your class quickly. The index is also a useful guide as to which activities are best suited to which techniques. I thought the inclusion of CELTA methodology on modelling and drilling, drawn from Millin’s CELTA tutoring, was useful as a reminder for both experienced and inexperienced teachers alike. As a series, I think the round’s ‘Minis’ are an excellent investment for time-poor teachers who are not able to keep up with all the fantastic material being produced online in blogs and newsletters. If this title appeals to you, don’t hesitate to check out Millin’s blog at http://sandymillin.wordpress.com. Finlay McCall currently teaches Academic English at UTS:INSEARCH in Sydney and is interested in teacher training and development. [email protected]
Logic Activities
David Boughton
Reviewed by Gloria Del’amore Moreira As the name suggests, Logic Activities focuses on using logical reasoning in the classroom and contains a series of tasks based on given clues; students have to think logically solve the puzzle. There is either a grammar or vocabulary focus for each activity, and hence they can be used to reinforce language previously studied by the students.
Volume 32 No 2 English Australia Journal 83 There is a clear introduction to the book and its activities (10 altogether). The material not only tries to get students thinking, but also to get them talking and interacting with each other. I found that they can be a great way to get students’ attention back to the lesson when the teacher feels that they are losing focus. It can also be useful at the beginning of a lesson if the teacher feels students are not motivated or enthusiastic enough to study. I would call it a very effective ‘sleep-mode breaker’ as students tend to become very alert and involved. In my opinion, this book is suitable for EFL/ESL students of all levels. The activities are easy to understand and the steps are very clearly explained and easy to follow. Also included in the book are suggestions for teachers on how to use it and how to extend the activities. The material is environmentally friendly as teachers can choose not to photocopy the pages for students, but rather write the activities on the board; this is very effective in getting the whole class focused at particular points. Overall, Logic Activities is a great resource for teachers who want to try something different and get students thinking outside the box. I highly recommend it. Gloria Del’Amore Moreira is a senior teacher at the University of Canberra College English Language Centre. [email protected]
Moral Dilemmas
Lindsay Clandfield
Reviewed by Rigert Van Eeden
Moral Dilemmas is another e-book for teachers of English who would like to help their students talk about a topic and think outside the box. The book aims to elicit language from learners and at the same time helps them think a little differently about the choices that they make in their everyday lives. I was lucky enough to have the opportunity to use the material with an upper- intermediate class of 14-year-old students and an intermediate class of roughly the same age. The learners found the ideas behind the topics (and the topics themselves, including death, love and money) quite interesting and they were thoroughly engaged. From my perspective, the material was particularly useful as a lead-in to a speaking- oriented lesson as it got the students talking and thinking. Some found it especially fascinating to play devil’s advocate and argue the opposite side of a popular opinion. Despite being a ‘Mini’, there is enough material in Moral Dilemmas to keep students interested. The material is easily adapted and different roles could be assigned to students to keep things interesting. Overall, I found it very easy to work with the book and adapt it to my needs and purposes. I also enjoyed using the material and,
84 English Australia Journal Volume 32 No 2 much more importantly, it got my students engaged and talking. Even the shyest ones enjoyed sharing their opinions and as a book that is intended to get students talking, it succeeds perfectly. I would definitely recommend this book for teachers of intermediate level students and higher. Rigert van Eeden has been teaching English in Taipei, Taiwan for the past 10 years. He is currently working in a secondary school. [email protected]
Brainstorming
Gerhard Erasmus & Hall Houston
Reviewed by Hayley Crawford
The aim of this publication is to provide inspiration for brainstorming activities in the EFL/ESL classroom. Although easily dismissed as a simple ‘lead-in’ activity, this strategy can be of immense help to teachers who want their students to think critically, and this is where this ‘Mini’ title, Brainstorming, has its greatest use. The introduction sets up how to facilitate the brainstorming sessions, and an activities section gives the teacher 20 topics (problem statements) and procedures. Brainstorming contains a wide variety of activities which can be adapted to suit all levels, as well as practical advice on how to conduct and troubleshoot a brainstorming session. The problem statements are simple, creative and relatively familiar — for example, choosing a superhero to help solve a problem they are currently experiencing — and therefore give students the confidence to critically analyse. Each student has the opportunity to express their ideas, whether verbally or in writing, allowing weaker students to contribute. In addition to critical thinking, these activities can be used for warmers and getting-to- know-you purposes. They are also useful ways of revising vocabulary and grammatical points covered in a course as the teacher can easily adapt the context of the sessions to exploit these areas of learning. Despite this, some of the stages in the activities in Brainstorming seemed to be quite complex and involved. While the writers suggest brainstorming needs to be purposeful, meaningful and practical, I found it hard to try and align the end result with my academic English lessons’ aims. However, it is still a useful tool and would be easier to adapt to a General English course. Overall, Brainstorming is a welcome guide for teachers who want more creativity in their class and more chances for students to engage in critical thinking. Hayley Crawford has been teaching ESL since 2006. She is currently a Senior Teacher at Navitas English, Sydney. [email protected]
Volume 32 No 2 English Australia Journal 85 Energising EAP
Meredith MacAulay
Reviewed by Richard Ingold
That EAP classes need not be boring is a well-worn cliché. Yet even a cursory glance at most EAP materials – including the new, slick additions to the EAP market from the big publishers – can have soporific effects. This is where Energising EAP, the latest addition to the round ‘Minis’ series, comes in. It provides short and engaging communicative tasks that are fun and have a very clear role in helping the development of students’ academic English. The 22 activities contained in Energising EAP are clearly explained and can be taken straight into the classroom with minimal preparation. Each one is introduced with an outline of the task’s focus – fluency practice, expressing opinions and vocabulary revision, for example – and a brief description of the rationale for including the activity in an EAP lesson. The procedure is explained step by step and suggestions for optional extensions and task variations are often provided. There is a wide range of activities included in the book, meaning that it is quite easy to find one that is appropriate for most EAP lessons. The tasks are also well suited to the EAP classroom: vocabulary tasks offer ways to introduce and revise the huge amount of lexis required for students to successfully complete an EAP course; the pronunciation tasks target this vital but often overlooked aspect of language development; and the brainstorming and opinion tasks are structured in a way that will help students coming from cultures where rapid idea generation is not encouraged to gain confidence in this highly valued, Western academic skill. Energising EAP is recommended for experienced and new teachers alike. As an experienced EAP teacher, I have a set of warmers and energising activities that I use regularly. However, it is easy to repeatedly fall back on favourites and miss out on other, possibly more efficient or fun, ways of approaching lessons. Using Energising EAP prompted me to rethink my teaching techniques and has expanded my teaching repertoire considerably. The book would also be an excellent investment (of $1!) for teachers beginning to teach EAP, offering them ways to work outside their course materials while remaining focused on the learning needs of their EAP students. Richard Ingold teaches Academic English at Navitas English in Sydney. [email protected], Twiter: @RichardIngold
86 English Australia Journal Volume 32 No 2 Get Ready for IELTS
Fiona Aish, Jane Short, Rhona Snelling, Jo Tomlinson, & Els Van Geyte Collins, 2016
Reviewed by Melissa Reed
Get Ready for IELTS, aimed at pre-intermediate to intermediate students (bands 3.5–4.5), is quite a unique coursebook in several ways. To start with, most IELTS texts are aimed at higher-level students. This course was written to fill a gap in the market for lower-level students who wish to do IELTS, but for whom regular IELTS texts are too complex. The other divergence from most coursebooks is that it employs a ‘flipped learning’ approach, an idea which has been gaining popularity across a variety of educational settings. The idea of flipped learning is that students prepare for their classes ahead of time, usually using interactive content and videos so that class time is used for collaboration and problem-solving (Tucker, 2012). The question is whether these differences make Get Ready for IELTS an effective coursebook. It is true that many students want to start preparing for IELTS as early as possible. However, a band score under 5.0 is rarely useful and students may be in for a very long preparation period before receiving their desired score. In addition, deficiencies in grammar and vocabulary are a significant obstacle to success for these students. In fact, two of the authors of this course, Tomlinson and Aish, have stated that these two areas should be a special focus of any low-level IELTS class (2014). Therefore, when reviewing this book, I was looking for level-appropriate materials and a grammar and vocabulary focus to help students develop their language skills. What I found was that although the activities in the book are progressive in terms of challenge, even the earlier activities would be a stretch for a pre-intermediate student. For an intermediate student, however, I found that the book was level-appropriate and the skills lessons were scaffolded well to allow for progression over the course. Reading skills are taught in a structured way in order to encourage efficient, effective reading. For example, students are given questions on the organisation of paragraphs and the text as a whole before answering questions about main ideas (p. 13). Listening
Volume 32 No 2 English Australia Journal 87 activities are dealt with equally well. Speaking skills are taught in a comprehensive way. Students gradually build up their answers to questions in Parts 1 and 3 of the Speaking exam by adding reasons and examples. Pronunciation is also an integral part of the course. Students are exposed to a variety of questions and models for Parts 1 and 2 of the Writing exam for IELTS Academic. While I found the writing lessons helpful in preparing students for these exams, I felt that lower-level students may need further scaffolding before tackling exam-style questions. For example, the first writing task of the book involves students tackling a full essay. It would perhaps be more beneficial to ask students to construct a paragraph and build up from that in later lessons. Teachers would also probably wish to give students more help in planning and brainstorming their essays before writing – an area which is lacking in the book. The much-needed grammar and vocabulary is part of the course, but because of the flipped content, it appears in a way that may not be familiar to teachers. In the coursebook itself, there is a grammar reference section, but there are only minimal references to it during the lessons. For example, students may be directed to a reference page on passives if they are approaching a Part 1 Writing task. The concept is that students should do most of their grammar and vocabulary preparation for a lesson in advance, either using the companion site Collins Connect, or the Get Ready for IELTS Workbook. I did not have complete access to these resources, but the sample pages include exercises which seem clear and structured. The question is whether students would adequately be able to learn the grammar for this level at home on their own. My feeling is that learning the vocabulary independently may be possible, but that students would need a lot more support during class time for grammar development. The other difficulty is that flipped classrooms only work when all (or almost all) of the students complete the activities in advance. In my own experience of flipped classrooms, this is rarely the case. Ultimately, Get Ready for IELTS offers an interesting new take on IELTS for intermediate students. However, pre-intermediate students will likely find the materials too
88 English Australia Journal Volume 32 No 2 challenging, and teachers may have to be creative in the use of supplementary resources to integrate grammar and vocabulary more fully into the course.
References Tomlinson, J., & Aish, F. (2014). Can IELTS be taught at lower levels? Voices Magazine. Retrieved from https://www.britishcouncil.org/voices-magazine/ielts-taught-lower- levels Tucker, B. (2012). The Flipped Classroom: Online instruction at home frees class time for learning. Education Next, 12(1). Retrieved from http://educationnext.org/ the-flipped-classroom/
Melissa Reed is the Director of Studies and Cambridge Examinatons Manager at Kaplan Internatonal English, Sydney. She teaches General English as well as IELTS and Cambridge courses. She is currently working on a project on online award-based assessment as part of the English Australia Acton Research in ELICOS program (2016).
Volume 32 No 2 English Australia Journal 89 A Practical Introduction to Teacher Training in ELT
John Hughes
Pavilion, 2015
Reviewed by Sophia Khan
Teacher training is a popular career path for experienced teachers as they seek ways to continue to grow and to share their skills and expertise with others. It’s also very common for teachers to move into a management role and find themselves responsible for observations and in-service training. However, just as being a good language user isn't the same as being a good language teacher, being a good language teacher isn't the same as being a good teacher trainer (or manager for that matter). Ideally, there would be some kind of ‘train the trainer’ course to aid the transition (such as there is for new CELTA trainers, for instance), yet often this is not the case. It’s in the absence of such a course that A Practical Introduction to Teacher Training in ELT really comes into its own. Written by John Hughes, whom many will recognise as a co-author of the coursebooks Life (National Geographic Learning) and Business Result (Oxford), this book is pitched at a broad audience, from those wondering how to get started, to experienced trainers, and managers needing to implement training programmes. Across six logically sequenced chapters, the book covers moving into teacher training, training techniques, lesson planning and teaching practice, observing, feedback and managing teacher training. Hughes’ sparse, clear prose and the book’s simple, uncluttered layout make it easy reading and accessible to teachers from a range of backgrounds. He often offers differentiated advice for experienced and inexperienced trainers; he
90 English Australia Journal Volume 32 No 2 also addresses a range of different training contexts, including online and blended learning. Each chapter contains ‘Ask Yourself’ sections to encourage reflection and application of the ideas from the chapters to the reader’s own context. Hughes is a long-time Trinity trainer, so the book’s content will seem very familiar to anyone training on certificate courses, though old-hands will find there are still plenty of ideas to steal. Throughout the text there are numerous example materials, including some excellent photocopiable pages. New or would-be trainers will find the initial chapters on getting started and training techniques very useful, but it’s really the way Hughes peppers his text with advice from the front lines of training that is most valuable. For instance, it’s one thing to teach something to people who don't know anything (on pre-service courses), another to teach people who do (in-house) and who may not want to be ‘trained’. As he calmly puts it, ‘Don't be surprised if everyone doesn’t rush forward to thank you’ (p. 148). Another area where Hughes’ on-the-ground advice is very useful is planning and feedback. He reminds us that for pre-service teachers, planning ‘can feel like someone has asked them to cook a three-course meal in a giant kitchen with every ingredient imaginable’ (p. 81). He also considers nitty-gritty issues like how much support teachers should get in planning, at what point feedback on a plan might be destabilising to a teacher and the delicate role of the trainer in weighing up how trainee personality and ‘readiness’ should influence the feedback given at different times. I appreciated Hughes’ honesty about the ‘uneasy balance’ of being responsible not only for developing teachers, but also for evaluating them – as any Director of Studies will attest. While Hughes has no magical solution, he does offer some sound advice, which would pre-empt many a problem in the workplace if only it was adhered to, such as agreeing on what is being looked for before an observation and not leaving the poor teacher wondering why you walked out before ‘the good bit’. He also discusses team teaching as an in-service approach to teacher development and support, and how to set up an effective peer-observation programme. This book’s accessibility, broad appeal and practical focus is its strength but, as a result, it can feel a bit magazine-like and those wanting to go deeper might feel something is lacking. For instance, I do believe that giving effective feedback is a hard-won skill and one of the things I would like to have seen explored in this book is the difference between ‘good’ and ‘bad’ feedback and the impact that bad feedback can have. I would also have been interested in seeing more on coaching and mentoring as alternatives to formal training or peer observations.
Volume 32 No 2 English Australia Journal 91 Overall, this book would be most useful for those in a management position where they have to take responsibility for ongoing staff development and performance, or for experienced teachers who are considering a move into teacher training and want to know how to get started. There’s plenty in A Practical Introduction to Teacher Training in ELT to make it interesting reading and a source of new ideas for more experienced teacher trainers as well. A worthy investment.
Sophia Khan is the Classroom Talk Editor of the English Australia Journal, and has been a teacher trainer since 2004.
If you would like to write a review for the English Australia Journal, please contact the Reviews Editor: [email protected]
92 English Australia Journal Volume 32 No 2 Penny Ur’s 100 Teaching Tips
Penny ur
Cambridge University Press, 2016
Reviewed by Walter Slamer
Under the editorship of Scott Thornbury, Cambridge University Press has been publishing a number of slim, pocket-sized editions of the excellent Cambridge Handbooks for Language Teachers series. In general, the series focuses on practical ideas, activities and techniques for teachers of English and other languages, covering a great number of aspects of the profession, be they specific skills like listening or reading, teaching approaches, classroom management, or teaching with resources such as visual and digital media. Now Penny Ur, teacher, teacher trainer and author of many well-known and practical publications on ELT, has contributed the latest book to this Pocket Edition series. She has compiled a set of 100 teaching tips drawn from her experience-based insights over a 30-year career teaching in schools and universities. The book is organised to be a volume for dipping into, browsing and jumping from section to section rather than to be read straight through. The 100 tips, which cover the macro skills, classroom management, student motivation, lesson planning and structuring, assessment, use of coursebooks, and others, are compiled into 19 alphabetically organised sections, with an introductory page for each section. Initially, the structure of the book seems a little odd, as a reasonable expectation is that sections would be organised thematically, but in practice the alphabetical ordering works well. The tips are preceded by very comprehensive contents pages, and just in case you really cannot find something, concluded with a detailed index. The publisher has placed a real emphasis on making the book as easily navigable as possible for a teacher in a rush, or one nervously preparing to face a new class. I also found it very ‘handleable’ in its Pocket Edition size – small, light, easy to carry around, browse, fold back and flick through. Another strength is that each tip is restricted to one easy-to-
Volume 32 No 2 English Australia Journal 93 read page and very often concludes with a bibliographic reference to another book or journal article should teachers wish to explore further, or perhaps to provide access to an external source for justification of the advice and ideas presented in the tip. Every teacher, new or experienced, would find this book of value. It is highly practical, and the 100 tips cover considerable ground. Many of these tips would probably be a familiar part of an experienced teacher’s practice, but are often presented from a slightly less familiar perspective, with a reference to one of Ur’s personal teaching experiences, or, as mentioned, with an evidence-based justification. Other tips are known but perhaps forgotten by Penny Ur’s practitioners, or convincing enough to be attempted and assessed again for their utility. Some, like ‘Start with a Smile’, appear quite simple but are teased out by Ur in an insightful manner, in this case touching on the use of non-verbal communication and 10 0 body language in teaching and learning, Teaching Tips easing tensions and affecting mood, and even a warning on over use. Ur has some undoubted skill in blending the practical Cambridge Handbooks for Language Teachers Pocket editions with the theoretical, justifying choices Series Editor: Scott Thornbury with researched evidence and personal experience, which is exactly the kind of mix most teachers would recognise and appreciate. I explicitly tested several of the tips with two high-level EAP classes of postgraduate university students, as well as using the book as a resource for training a group of volunteer teachers who were very new to the profession. With students, implementing some of the tips produced a change in the regular delivery of the lesson, which they appreciated, and in the case of Tip 4, ‘Teach New Material First: Review Later’, definitely resulted in improved student performance. Among teachers, confidence was boosted and the tips worked to focus attention on particular parts of their lessons. Additionally, the use of the tips influenced a broader examination of the teaching process itself leading to an increased level of post-lesson reflection. The teacher training workshop used 4 tips, on discipline, games, heterogeneous (mixed-level) classes and teacher talk, in the development of a set of class management procedures. Some new teachers commented on the instinctively ‘good sense’ embodied in these
94 English Australia Journal Volume 32 No 2 tips, which were fairly readily adapted by the group, with meaningful discussion along the way, into the set of procedures. Thus, it appears, with a little imagination, the book can be used in a number of settings. Penny Ur’s 100 Teaching Tips is highly recommended. Ur’s considerable experience and fluent writing style have produced a book which is practical, easily accessible and at times quite insightful. It links well to relevant research and would be very useful to both new and experienced teachers.
Walter Slamer is a teacher at the Centre for English Teaching at The University of Sydney. He taught and managed ELT programs in Indonesia and Cambodia for over 10 years, and taught in the NSW TAFE system. His expertse and professional interests lie in EAP and ELT in developing country contexts.
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Volume 32 No 2 English Australia Journal 95 Academic Culture A student’s guide to studying at university Third edition
Jean Brick, Maria Herke & Deanna Wong
Palgrave Macmillan, 2016
Reviewed by Janice Ford
Have you ever been somewhere and wished you had gone there years earlier? Did you feel as if you had been let in on a long-kept secret? That’s how I felt reading Academic Culture by Jean Brick, Maria Herke and Deanna Wong. How had I not seen this book before? Where was it when I went back to study? From the uncluttered front cover to the final page of the index, this highly readable book clearly addresses the gamut of issues and skills relevant to studying and interacting in an Australian university context. It is exactly what it claims to be – a guide. Like a tour guide in a foreign country, it patiently shows students what they need to do to successfully complete their journey through university, introducing them to the necessary language, explaining the culture, answering the questions they might ask and ensuring they know the answers to vital questions that they would never have thought of asking. Academic Culture is separated into four sections: ‘Expectations’, ‘Researching the Topic’, ‘Expressing Your Voice and Referring to the Voice of Others’ and ‘Writing Academic Texts’. These sections are further divided into clear, skills-focused chapters with question format subtitles leading students gently to an understanding of the ‘attitudes, values and ways of behaving that are shared by the people who teach, research or study in universities’ (p. xiii). Each chapter commences with well-defined learning objectives (mirroring university courses) and a convenient word list, which is supported by a glossary at the back of the book. There is a valuable summary at the end of each chapter and a skills practice section to give students the opportunity to assess their understanding of the chapter contents. Answers are supplied for
96 English Australia Journal Volume 32 No 2 most tasks, except for those where students are encouraged to apply knowledge to material of their own choice. The chapters are not overly long but have sufficient space for writing notes. Throughout each section, there are countless models of a variety of texts from different subject areas, such as health, business and linguistics, which although specific, are sufficiently broad to be accessible to most readers. These texts are discussed in detail and are mostly annotated to clarify the points being made. This integrated approach means that students are exposed to contextualised examples before attempting to analyse and construct texts themselves. Section 1, ‘Expectations’, deals with the culture of academic study with its chapters going beyond what you might expect. For example, there is a focus on not just opinions, but a more holistic ‘Opinions, Positions and Bias’; not just critical thinking, but ‘Critical Thinking, Problem-Solving and Description’. Chapter 4, ‘Independent Learning’, deals with a concept which may be challenging for students who have come from a highly supported learning background. Students are alerted to what is means to be an independent learner and the kinds of services and support they can expect to find at their university. Section 2, ‘Researching the Topic’, introduces students to lectures, tutorials, academic reading and listening, and the often confronting presentations and group work. Specific language and strategies are provided to enable students to gain a practical understanding of these aspects of learning at university and to help them develop the skills required to succeed. One valuable inclusion here is a selection of links and suggestions for accessing authentic academic lectures. Section 3, ‘Expressing Your Voice and Referring to the Voice of Others’, covers areas such as the purpose and audience of an essay, avoiding plagiarism, differentiating between original ideas and those of others and the use of specific language such as hedges and attitude markers. The final section, ‘Writing Academic Texts’, details the writing process, highlighting the flow of an argument as well as the purpose,
Volume 32 No 2 English Australia Journal 97 audience, structure and organisation of essays and reports. There is special mention of critical thinking and voice in report writing and a separate chapter on writing research reports, which are a common assignment on many tertiary programs. Chapter 16, one of the two new chapters in this third edition, guides students through the planning, drafting, editing and proofreading stages of assignments. The second new chapter, Chapter 21, is a welcome inclusion, dealing with the ever growing need for students to be competent users of technology. It covers the protocols for online discussions and emailing lectures, and why to check the course website before emailing lecturers with questions! For students coming from educational backgrounds less reliant on technology, or students returning to study, technology use can be one of the major barriers to success at university. Having been an external student myself, I am all too aware of the challenges of learning online, negotiating learning management systems, contributing to discussion forums, remembering to check university emails and missing significant announcements. Academic Culture is highly recommended for EAP classes. Designed in a format similar to a university course textbook, students can develop skills for, and knowledge of, academia while learning how to use authentic course materials. EAP teachers should consider using this as a textbook, or to supplement other resources they are using in their course. Business English and other ESP teachers would also find this book beneficial and would certainly find sufficient relevant material to include it in their programmes. Students will find this book immensely useful as an ongoing reference once they have commenced their tertiary study, so the purchase would be well justified. They can dip into it as necessary, as if referring to a guide book while travelling. As a TESOL lecturer, I see this book being of equal benefit to local and international students studying at undergraduate or postgraduate level and especially for students returning to university after a significant break. I found myself thinking, ‘If only Kishor had known this at the beginning of semester.’ Academic Culture will certainly be on the suggested reading list for my students.
Janice Ford is an experienced primary teacher and TESOL teacher to migrants and internatonal students. Afer three years lecturing in educaton in Alice Springs to local and Indigenous students, she has recently returned to Sydney and is a Scholarly Teaching Fellow on the Graduate Certfcate in TESOL at Macquarie University.
98 English Australia Journal Volume 32 No 2 Elements of Success 4 Student Book with Essential Online Practice
Anne M. Ediger, Jennie Currie Santamaria & Randee Falk
Oxford University Press, 2016
Reviewed by Meredith Macaulay
Elements of Success 4 is one of the newest forays into the academic English market. This coursebook adds to the established series of Grammar for Language Learning books (1, 2 and 3) and, with its more specific focus on Grammar for Writing, attempts to address the needs of more advanced EAP students. It is certainly an ambitious offering. Pitched at learners at the C1 level, the coursebook includes a whopping 182 pages in its five chapters. There is an extensive appendix at the end of the book, vocabulary endnotes for each unit and a sixty-two-page resource section, which includes grammar charts, a grammar reference guide and a quotation and citation guide with three different referencing styles: MLA, APA and Chicago. A highlighted feature in the promotion of this book is the online practice. The Student Book comes with a login to a Learning Management System (LMS), which aims to develop students’ independent learning strategies and resembles the online tools used in many universities. The LMS incorporates practice activities and a ‘Writing Tutor’. Linked to the main writing tasks in the coursebook, this support tool reinforces essay structure and target grammar and includes an interactive function to highlight features in a model essay and in students’ own writing. The LMS allows teachers to facilitate online communication via a discussion board and to monitor students’ progress. Also provided are teaching support materials such as coursebook answers, teaching notes, PowerPoint presentations and quizzes which can be released to students online. Based on analysis of writing assignments in different fields of academic study, Elements of Success 4 contains units representing some core functions of writing in higher education. Unit 2, ‘Reporting Ideas’, cites the function of ‘demonstrating
Volume 32 No 2 English Australia Journal 99 knowledge and understanding’ (p. 36). It introduces the concept of paraphrasing and focuses on reporting verbs, looking at a number of different grammatical patterns. Unit 5, ‘Softening and Strengthening Statements’, is linked to the function of ‘preparing for professional practice’ (p. 152) and includes the language of hedging and boosting, the use of the passive voice and ‘empty it’ constructions. Units begin with a topical quote for discussion, illustrated by an engaging full-page photo. Next, there is a warmer, such as a short passage or a quiz, which highlights the target language of the chapter in context and serves as a diagnostic tool to determine what students already know about the required language. What follows are numerous texts, ranging from one paragraph to two pages, exemplifying the target language. At first, these texts are used for ‘noticing exercises’ of the following kind: ‘Read the passage. Are the bold words and phrases used as hedgers or boosters? What function does each serve?’ (p. 155). Exercises then become oriented to practice, albeit mostly mechanical practice such as gapfills. While students are prompted to discuss the ideas in some of the longer texts, these discussion questions often follow form-based exercises. The ones preceding the writing do a more thorough job of exploiting the texts, however. Each chapter has two writing assignments that prompt students to use the target language and to incorporate ideas from the chapter’s numerous texts. For example, in Chapter 2, students are asked to summarise different views on GMO food using reporting verbs. Each chapter culminates with a longer writing task – a different type of essay for each unit. Students are guided through the writing process via a number of useful tips, a model, and tasks dealing with brainstorming, essay organisation, drafting, peer review and proofreading. All of the models include citations. However, this feature may not work well as a teaching tool for Australian teachers as the referencing style used is MLA. It could be argued that this course does both too much and too little. The sheer number of structures presented is overwhelming and teachers could have trouble prioritising them. For example, it would be more beneficial for students to have fewer choices of reporting structures presented to them and more practice in paraphrasing
100 English Australia Journal Volume 32 No 2 and integrating source material. The excessive time spent on the noticing exercises also takes away from more meaningful tasks in which students can experiment with language and become more fluent and critical writers. The introduction of so much metalanguage, e.g., ‘boosters’ and ‘back shifting’, could also distract from the learning of more useful vocabulary. Secondly, while the coursebook includes some useful writing practice at the end of each unit, it does not entirely meet the writing needs of advanced EAP students. The book lacks attention to features of writing such as cohesion and developing lexical resources, and vital grammar such as cause and effect is missing. On the other hand, for me, one of the most appealing features of the coursebook is the authentic texts. They are engaging and current and often accompanied by a colour photo. They are also taken from a range of disciplines and include topics, such as the golden rice and GMO debate, workplace privacy and surveillance, and fracking. A teacher could use the practice exercises sparingly but could exploit the texts as a basis for discussion and language analysis, and to use as source material for writing assignments such as those specified in the book. In summary, while I would not recommend Elements of Success 4 as a core component of an EAP writing course, it could be used as a supplement and could be a useful addition to a staffroom bookshelf. It could also be used in a student learning support unit, one-on-one with students, or for self-study. However, at present answers are only available to teachers online. Making them accessible to students would be advisable for the publisher to increase the appeal of the book.
Meredith Macaulay has taught languages for over 20 years in a variety of contexts. She currently teaches Academic English, writes course materials and works as a teacher trainer at the University of New South Wales Insttute of Languages.
Twiter: @MeredithMacAul1
Volume 32 No 2 English Australia Journal 101 General Informaton
The English Australia Journal is published twice each year, in April and September. It welcomes contributions from those involved in TESOL teaching, training and research. Contributors will receive a complimentary copy of the journal issue in which their article or review appears. Published articles and reviews will also appear on the English Australia website when the issue goes online.
Guidelines for contributors General information and detailed guidelines for contributors may be found on the English Australia website, http://www.englishaustralia.com.au/english_australia_ journal.html (scan the QR code at the bottom of this page to go there directly). Contributors are asked to refer to these and observe them closely, as submissions that do not meet requirements may not be accepted. Please direct any queries to the Editor before submitting. Important note: • all artcles are subject to a revision process. If an artcle cannot be revised in tme for a print deadline, it will be carried over to a subsequent issue. • accepted artcles are the property of the English Australia Journal and may be republished only with permission. • English Australia reserves the right to reject submissions or withdraw artcles from publicaton.
102 English Australia Journal Volume 32 No 2 Advertising The English Australia Journal is read by professionals involved in TESOL throughout Australia and, increasingly, overseas. Advertising for relevant courses, publications, computer software, hardware or any other products is welcome. Details of rates are to be found at the end of this issue.
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Volume 32 No 2 English Australia Journal 103 English Australia Member Colleges
March 2017
Australian Capital Territory (ACT) ANU College UC College English Language Centre (UCCELC) New South Wales (NSW) Ability English - Sydney Academy of Commerce Academy of English - Blue Mountains Academy of English - Sydney Access Language Centre ACU English Language Centre - North Sydney Australia Onsung Internatonal College Australian Insttute of Professional Educaton Australian Internatonal College of English Australian Pacifc College - Sydney (Clarence Street) Australian Pacifc College - Sydney (Kent Street) Centre for English Teaching, The University of Sydney CQUniversity English Language Centre - Sydney EF Internatonal Language Schools ELS Universal English College ELSIS Sydney Embassy English - Sydney English Language Company Greenwich English College ILSC Australia - Sydney Internatonal House - Sydney Kaplan Internatonal College - Sydney City Kaplan Internatonal College - Sydney - Manly Kingsway Insttute Macquarie University English Language Centre
104 English Australia Journal Volume 32 No 2 Nan Tien Insttute-Sydney Navitas English - Bondi Navitas English - Manly Navitas English - Sydney North Coast Insttute English Language Centre - Kingsclif NSW English Language Centre TAFE Hunter Insttute - Newcastle SELC Australia - Bondi SELC Australia - Sydney City Specialty Language Centre and Oxford College of English Strathfeld College Sydney College of English TAFE English Language Centre (TELC) - Meadowbank TAFE Internatonal Educaton Centre (TIEC) - Liverpool TAFE NSW Sydney Insttute English Centre (SITEC) Taylors College - Sydney Torrens University Language Centre University of New England English Language Centre University of Newcastle Language Centre - Newcastle University of Newcastle Language Centre - Sydney UNSW Global Pty Ltd T/A Insttute of Languages UOW College UTS:INSEARCH Western Sydney University, The College Wollongong English Language & Cultural Centre, TAFE Illawarra Insttute Northern Territory (NT) Navitas English - Darwin Queensland (QLD) ACU English Language Centre - Brisbane Bond University English Language Insttute Cairns Language Centre / Eurocentres Cairns CQUniversity English Language Centre - Brisbane CQUniversity English Language Centre - Rockhampton Embassy English - Brisbane Embassy English - Surfers Paradise
Volume 32 No 2 English Australia Journal 105 English Unlimited Grifth English Language Insttute - Brisbane Grifth English Language Insttute - Gold Coast ILSC Australia – Brisbane Impact English Brisbane Insttute of Contnuing & TESOL Educaton, The University of Queensland (ICTE-UQ) Kaplan Internatonal College - Brisbane Kaplan Internatonal College - Cairns Lexis English - Brisbane Lexis English - Noosa Lexis English - Sunshine Coast Navitas English - Brisbane QUT Internatonal College Sarina Russo Insttute Shafston Internatonal College - Brisbane Shafston Internatonal College - Gold Coast Southbank Insttute Language Centre Whitsundays College of English SACE South Australia (SA) Bradford College Centre for English Language in the University of South Australia (CELUSA) Eynesbury College Academy of English Intensive English Language Insttute Kaplan Internatonal College - Adelaide South Australian College of English TAFE SA Adelaide English Language Centre University of Adelaide Tasmania (TAS) University of Tasmania English Language Centre - Launceston University of Tasmania English Language Centre - Hobart Victoria (VIC) Ability English - Melbourne Academia Internatonal ACU English Language Centre - Melbourne
106 English Australia Journal Volume 32 No 2 Australian Natonal College of English Chambers Insttute CQUniversity English Language Centre - Melbourne Deakin University English Language Insttute Discover English ELSIS Melbourne Embassy English - Melbourne Hawthorn-Melbourne Holmes English Language Centre Impact English College INUS Australia – Educaton & Training Kangan Insttute Kaplan Internatonal College - Melbourne La Trobe Melbourne Lyceum English Language Australia Monash College Pty Ltd Ozford English Language Centre Performance Educaton - Melbourne RMIT English Worldwide Swinburne University English Language Centre VU English Western Australia (WA) Australian English Language Centre Centre for English Language Teaching, The University of Western Australia Curtn English Kaplan Internatonal College - Perth Lexis English - Perth Milner Internatonal College of English Murdoch Language Centre, Murdoch Insttute of Technology Navitas English - Perth Perth Internatonal College of English Phoenix Academy TAFE Western Australia - Bentley Campus TAFE Western Australia - Perth Campus
Volume 32 No 2 English Australia Journal 107 English Australia Journal Subscriptions
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108 English Australia Journal Volume 32 No 2 English Australia Journal Advertising
The English Australia Journal, featuring peer-reviewed and teacher-prepared articles, as well as reviews of recent ELT resources, is published twice a year, in April and in September. Copies of the English Australia Journal are sent to every English Australia member college, professional affiliate member and an increasing number of independent subscribers. Each issue of the English Australia Journal is also promptly posted, in full colour, on the English Australia website. Advertisements are submitted in full colour and are published in greyscale in the hard copy of the English Australia Journal, and in full colour in the online version. Advertising rates include publication in both hard copy and online:
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Volume 32 No 2 English Australia Journal 109 110 English Australia Journal Volume 32 No 2