These days whether at work or in our personal lives, so much communication happens via social media messaging or texting apps. I can’t imagine my life without the ability to set up segmented groups of friends to organise events, work on projects or chat about inane interests.
We are big fans of using text messages for lessons for this reason but also because it is this beautiful hybrid of written and spoken English. More so than that, it is written spoken-English, which means you can easily teach or practise many speaking skills and conversation layouts in this more controlled medium of messaging.
Bringing text messaging into the classroom has many advantages. You can practise conversations at a slightly slower pace; it gives you more to feed back on as at the end of a text conversation, you can see everything that has been written, a luxury we aren’t afforded when monitoring a speaking activity; but above all, it mirrors real-life communication.
In this lesson we look at a common conversation of someone inviting a group of friends to a birthday event.
I was in a school recently chatting to a teacher and I keep going over something they said. I can’t get it out of my head so I thought I would write a cheeky blog and see if I could pick it apart.
I don’t give writing homework because then I just have loads of writing to mark.
I think we’ve all expressed similar sentiments over the years. After all, when you factor in planning time and post-lesson reflections, and CPD, and admin, a large pile of writing submissions doesn’t seem super appealing. And, while I was obviously frustrated that this issue was stopping students from getting writing practice and feedback (more on this later), it wasn’t this sentiment that stuck in my mind. It was the word “mark”.
Below are the questions, I would like to consider in this post. In the discussion that follows, I am considering General English classes as opposed to specific writing courses, EAP, or Exam Skills classes.
What do we actually mean by “mark” when it comes to a piece of writing?
Should we be marking our students’ writing?
What feedback should we be giving them to encourage development?
Can we somehow save ourselves from doing all the work?
What do we mean by “mark”?
I think what the teacher and our industry in general means by marking a piece of writing is one of two things.
Highlighting and correcting the student’s errors.
Indicating errors and the type of errors and encouraging the student to correct them, or rewrite it without errors.
When I was a slightly younger man, I was learning Spanish, and I was a proper beginner. Outside of “hola” and “una copa de vino por favor”, I was pretty useless. I decided to start by learning some key verbs I might want to use, and seeing as how I liked writing I chose to write a story. It was not a good story by any stretch of the imagination but man, I was proud of it. “Andy y los Animales” it was called. A single paragraph about Andy and the myriad animals he had, allowing me to use a range of verbs and a lexical set of animals I’d just learnt.
Like any good student, I wanted some feedback so I gave it to my then girlfriend to mark. Well, Jesus, I have never been so demotivated in my life. I got a back a paragraph covered in green (she’d been kind enough not to use red) underlines and corrections. Some errors she’d left for me to correct. What did I do? I thanked her, popped it in the back of my notebook, never looked at it again, and went off to eat jamon and queso in an attempt to quash the feelings of demotivation I had. To this day I haven’t written another story in Spanish. Sad but true.
What did I want in that moment? I’m not entirely sure but I think I wanted some positivity and something manageable that I could improve upon.
If you take the marking approach to writing feedback, take a minute to reflect on these questions:
Have you ever received similar feedback to the story above? How did you feel? What action did you take? Was it developmental?
When you mark your students’ work, do they take it on board? Do they submit corrections or rewrites?
Should we be marking our students’ writing?
I think it is clear from the story above, where my feelings lie but I want to think about this from another side. When we correct our students’ errors, are we actually marking or are we editing? I would argue the latter. Editing is a specific skill and something that people pay for. What do our students pay us for? It’s not an editing service. I would say they pay us to help them develop their English language, and learning skills. When we mark or edit, do we achieve this? I would argue no.
What kind of feedback do students want?
Well, that depends on the task itself. Before any feedback is given, everyone in the class (including the teacher) needs to be clear on the point of the exercise.
Writing for Fluency
If the aim is to encourage a love for writing, or merely to encourage students to write more, then feedback should reflect that. One example of this would be asking students to write a message and then replying to that message naturally without highlighting errors. Development can come later by identifying common writing skills or linguistic issues and dealing with them in class at a later point.
Writing as a vehicle for language
Very often writing is used as a vehicle to test language that has been learnt in a lesson or over a number of lessons. Feedback in this situation only needs to focus on the language that has been learnt and should not on other areas of writing or language that arise. Again, these can be focused on in later lessons. As this is all learnt language, there should be no need for a teacher to correct the language. There is an expectation from learners that they are being assessed on their use of specific language and that they will have to correct it. The content is more or less meaningless as long as the language is used correctly.
Practising a specific writing skill
If a specific skill has been developed in class, then obviously writing practice is the way to asses it. Maybe the teacher has taught their students about referencing, avoiding repetition, organising a text, writing a cohesive text, writing an effective paragraph, or any other writing skill. In this situation, the feedback can focus entirely on how successful the student has been with this skill.
Can we save ourselves some work?
I still understand the teacher who doesn’t want to set writing. They were starting from the point of view that their job is to edit their students’ work, or facilitate an edit by highlighting all the errors. However, as seen above, if the aim is to engage students and see development in a specific area, then feedback can be focused and doesn’t have to be extensive.
That said, even when it’s focused, feedback still takes thought and time. And, it is flawed as the responsibility is still on the teacher to identify any issues. Don’t we want our learners to be identifying their own issues and dealing with them before the piece of writing gets to the teacher?
Creating an extra line of feedback.
As mentioned above, the key to setting up a writing task effectively is that everyone knows what is expected of them in the task and what feedback they will receive. In the examples given above, a single area of language or a single skill are being practised/assessed. However, very often teachers will want to practise a number of different skills and language points at once, in a single cohesive piece of writing.
The fact remains, clarity of expectations is key. Clear success criteria enable students to assess their own writing and that of their partner’s before it reaches the teacher. Imagine a class in which students have learnt to write an essay on the environment. They have learnt to organise an essay, to write topic sentences for each paragraph, and to use sign-posting so that it is easy to follow. They have also learnt a range of lexical chunks related to the environment. In this class, the teacher provides their learners with the success criteria below:
Because of the clarity of the criteria, students can assess their work and their partner’s, giving each other feedback and upgrading their writing before handing it in. This can happen inside class time, making it even more likely that rewrites and edits will occur…and it saves a bit of time outside, which is always nice.
Conclusion
Sometimes we all get wrapped up in this is what we do and this is what it’s called. I think it is important that we challenge these norms and if they don’t hold up, then it’s time to put them in the bin. Is there a place for marking? Probably, but I’m not sure it’s a General English classroom. We’re teachers, not editors.
I LOVE clear aims and objectives in a lesson. When I see a group of students and a teacher who know what they’re learning and why they’re learning it, I go all warm and fuzzy inside. But I hate useless admin, admin for the sake of it. I can’t stand the statement “we’ve always done it this way” it makes me the opposite of warm and fuzzy inside…chilly and smooth?
Recently I had a conversation with a teacher that made me go a bit chilly and smooth but I do not think this is an isolated occurrence. In fact I remember feeling this very way in my early years as a teacher. We were discussing aims and objectives and he said:
“I don’t know if anyone else feels this way but I always write my aims and objectives because I know I have to but I don’t know who they are for? Are they for me, are they for my students or are they for the British Council?”
And there it is…I’m chilly and smooth. The one statement worse than “we’ve always done it this way” is “we do it for accreditation” or in the UK, “we do it for the British Council” [shudders]. Because yes of course there are things that we do in a school that when our accreditation bodies arrive, we will display proudly. And there are things that accreditation bodies will look for in a school. And one of those things will be aims and objectives…but not so they can tick a box, not so we can tick a box, but because behind every accreditation criterium lies a very good reason, a justification for its existence.
Aims and objectives for aims and objectives sake are not a good thing…but a learner who knows what they are learning and how it will help them in their real life is most definitely a good thing. Aims and objectives are one way of achieving this.
So to answer this teacher’s question (and I should add here that this was an incredible teacher who was just trying to figure out how best to use aims&objectives in their lesson) I said:
“Aims and objectives are for your students first and foremost and should never be a tick box. They should be a talking point.”
From Tick Box to Talking Point
First of all a few tips on writing effective aims and objectives:
Write them in student friendly language. Remember who they are for.
Begin with your objective (what you want them to be better at by the end of the lesson)
Work backwards to write your aims (what do they need to learn to be better at this objective by the end of the lesson)
Make your objective real-life and relevant for your learners (“be able to use the present perfect & past simple” is not real life but “be able to describe your career” is)
Focus on function over form: Consider the difference between “learn to use the present perfect” and “learn to describe ongoing situations in my career using the present perfect”
Follow a pattern: Don’t change up how you write your aims & objectives every lesson. Follow a recognisable pattern and display them in the same place each lesson. This reduces the amount that learners need to process. They can focus on the key message.
If you follow the above, you should find yourself with effective aims and objectives but if you don’t do anything with them, then they are little more than a tick box. We need to move them to a talking point. They should be the basis of a discussion with your students. Consider the following:
At the beginning of your lesson:
Use the some or all of the questions below to open up a discussion:
How will this objective help you in your real life?
Which of these aims will be most challenging for you?
Which of these aims are you already confident in?
How confident are you?
Is there anything else you think you’ll need to achieve this objective?
During your lesson:
Keep the conversation going. Learners will always focus on what’s in front of them. Just because you know why something is relevant, doesn’t mean it is immediately apparent for the students.
Why do you think we learnt this?
How will this help you achieve the objective?
At the end of the lesson:
The ideal situation is a learner who can take what they’ve learnt in the lesson and bring it into their real lives but too often the lesson ends at the door. Keep it going:
How well do you feel you achieved the objective?
How will you practise this in your real life?
How will you apply what you learnt to your real life?
Is there anything you need more practice on?
How will you practise it?
Using the word “will” can be more powerful than “can” or “could”. It’s not about what is possible, it’s about them making a promise, a commitment to try this outside the classroom…and then it’s on you to follow up with them.
So if you’ve ever felt like you were writing aims and objectives for the British Council, try out some of the ideas above and remember who we should be writing them for.
Overt Teaching is something we have spoken about many times but never really written about…overtly. It is a part of our lessons, our procedures, our approach to teaching English but we’ve never really made the case for it on our blog…which seems odd.
No time like the present to sort that out.
What do we mean by Overt Teaching?
In our industry there has often been a tendency to hide what we are doing from our students. We sneak grammar in under the cover of darkness like spies crossing from East to West Berlin, afraid that our eagle-eyed students will notice the present perfect and completely disengage from the lesson. Or, we work towards the big reveal, the “ahhhhhh” moment when our students realise what we’ve been working towards this whole time.
The flaw with the above is that if our students don’t know what they’re doing and how it applies to their life, they’re much more likely to be disengaged. Equally, if we tell our learners we’re doing the present perfect, they are likely to disengage if they don’t see how it applies to their real lives.
Teaching overtly suggests that we involve our learners in the learning discussion throughout the lesson. Below are some key stages of the lesson when this can be easily applied.
Starting off on the right foot:
The beginning of your lesson is arguably the most important aspect as this is where we get all of our buy-in from our students. If we look in the average coursebook, considerable time and page space is (quite rightly) taken up with engaging our learners in the topic of the lesson. As an industry we recognise the importance of this but the actual aims and the objectives of the lesson are not given the same pride of place.
They are very often squashed into a tiny box in the top-left corner of the page. As teachers we very often display them on the wall or on a board or as part of our lesson plan that nobody looks at but why do we do this? Is it because our institution demands it? Is it so we can tick an accreditation box? Or, is it because we recognise that a clear understanding of what we’re doing and why we’re doing it is crucial to student engagement? If it is the latter, then we should be bringing it into our lesson, not as a monologue from the teacher but as a dialogue with our students.
Tip 1:
Have a clear distinction between your objective (the final outcome you are working towards) and your aim (the things you will cover in the class to help them achieve the objective successfully). Careful and consistent wording can help with this. Consider:
Today we are going to:
aim
aim
aim
So that you can:
Objective
Tip 2:
Make it a discussion and increase student engagement through simple questions:
How will this objective help you in your real life?
Which of these aims will be challenging for you?
Which is most important for you?
Which do you feel will be revision for you?
By involving our learners in this discussion, we put some of the learning responsibility on them. They have decided which aims they will need to focus on more; they have related the objective with their lives and decided how it will benefit them.
Setting up an activity:
Aims and objectives at the beginning of the lesson are crucial but it doesn’t stop there. Sadly, minutes after we’ve finished with the above discussion, our learners have probably forgotten what we’re working towards and are focusing on the interesting reading or listening exercise. Maybe they’re entirely focused on the grammar because they’re finding it challenging. Continued discussion throughout the lesson is key. We need to help our learners see that everything in our lesson is building towards the final objective; it’s not busy work, it’s not just stuff we’re doing, it’s building towards something greater.
Tip1:
Before or after an activity consider asking your students why it was important. For example, why did we just learn 6 new collocations to do with work? Because we’re going to need them later when we introduce our jobs. And will all of these collocations be useful for all of you? No, these 3 are useful for me but the others aren’t as useful because I don’t work in an office.
Or
Why did we just listen to that conversation? Because it was a model for the conversation we’re going to have later on.
These quick interactions help keep our students (and us) on track and moving towards our objective. Don’t expect them to have the above answers the first time you ask them though. As with anything, you will need to elicit and support your learners in coming to these realisations. Gradually, you can train them to understand why as opposed to just what they are doing.
Ending up on the right foot:
The beginning of the lesson is crucial to engagement but if you don’t actually reach the objective, you’ll lose your students’ trust the next time around. We’ve all been derailed mid-lesson and changed our plan because something more important has come up but how often do we communicate this to our students? It’s so important that we explain our decision-making process to them. We laid out our objectives and why they were important; if we veer from them, we owe it to our learners to explain why.
But lets assume we don’t get derailed. We reach our final production stage. We’ve spent 2 hours teaching vocabulary, grammar and skills that we now want our students to use in this final conversation. We set up the task and…none of them use the language! We’ve all been there but the question is what do we do about it?
Tip 1: Success Criteria
Very often our learners just forget what is expected of them. They’re keen to communicate so they fall back on what’s easy and use the language they had at their disposal at the beginning of the lesson. Clearly setting our your expectation before the activity is key. Ask your learners what a successful conversation looks like for them. Elicit that in order to be successful, they’ll have to use the language and skills from the lesson. The beauty of this is that everyone goes into the activity clear in their minds what success looks like but this can vary from one student to another. Success for a new student to the group might just be using the grammar correctly but for a stronger student, it might be combining the grammar and the new vocabulary. By opening it up to students and making it a dialogue, you move the responsibility for success back onto them. They’ve decided their own level of success and now they have to try to achieve it.
Tip 2: Repetition
Accept that you will have to do the final activity two or more times and plan this into your lesson. The first time students have the conversation, they are usually considering the content. They’re just trying to communicate and asking them to add in new language and skills is quite the load.
Let them have the conversation, then refocus them on the success criteria. Ask them to discuss whether or not they used the language from the lesson and then set the task up again. The second and third time round, content is not an issue anymore and they can focus on upgrading their language and skills.
Conclusion:
Overt Teaching doesn’t require you to change how you teach drastically, it just suggests you ask a little more of your learners. We all say we want more autonomous students…perhaps this is a first step. Throw back the curtain on your teaching & planning, let them in.
This lesson instead looks at persuasive language as well as offering students the chance to practise listening and giving natural responses.
Why 12 Angry Men? I have wanted to write a lesson using this clip for about 3 years and with the current political climate, this seems like a good moment to look at a clip which demonstrates prejudice. I find this clip optimistic in that most of the jurors move away from the speaker. Anyway, I digress. We were both impressed by a session given by Angelos Bollas (Dublin: 2018) on using materials that are emotionally engaging and hope some of that has filtered into this.
Time: 2hr
Level: Intermediate (B1) and above
Aim: to look at persuasive language and structuring a response
Show the clip with the sound off and ask the students what they think is happening? What makes the men stand up one by one and walk away from the table? This is to generate interest and pique their curiousity.
Listening:
2. This task relates back to question in pre-listening – giving a reason to watch and a chance for those who are stronger to identify the issues with what the speaker is saying.
In terms of answers you might want to let them know that it is the jury in a trial
3. This is more detailed and is looking for the following answers or similar. (However, if you think other answers work, go with it.)
Who has been accused and of what? – a kid (probably can infer murder)
What is the speaker’s attitude towards the case? clearly prejudiced against the kid and ‘others like him’
What do the rest of the juror’s think about what he is saying? again you can infer they disagree by walking away in peaceful protest
How does the speaker react when he is told to stop talking? Bemusement – defeat
Natural Response:
This section is meant to promote discussion in a lest gist orientated fashion. Allowing the students to analyse the text discuss it.
Is there any language here which is used to generalise a group of people? phrases like “you know how these people lie” “it’s born in them” “They don’t know what the truth is” “they don’t need any real big reason to kill someone either” “they get drunk”
Why might that be a problem in a trial? Clearly this speaker isn’t impartial
Do you think the speaker is racist? clearly this is contentious, but acting like this could definitely be considered as ‘Cultural racism’
Persuasive Language:
This is just a simple matching task
1 = H 2 = F 3 = D 4 = B 5 = I 6 = G 7 = E 8 = A 9 = C
2. The following techiques were used in the speech
Techniques: 1 2 3 4 7 9
Responding and debating: the rebuttal
The point of this is to give the students some chance to respond to the speech used in the clip by recording their own version. You could hold class discussions on suitable topics to include. The main aim is to get them to record a response that you can check and to use the check list.
The two methods of beginning are by no means the only options, but should give the students some help in starting. If you have others you prefer, please use them.
What do you think are the advantages or disadvantages of both?
Concession – advantages deflames situation / disadvantage could be that it implies a degree of agreement
Refutation – opposite to above.
Your response:
Give students time to plan. Let them think of arguments (claim and evidence) to help them in their short response.
Setting Success Criteria: When you mark these, tell the students in advance exactly what you will be checking for. If you are looking for structure, do not only correct them on their grammar or pronunciation. The checklist is here to help with structure, but depending on the needs of your class you could negotiate others with them. Or, in mixed ability classes even for each student.
Extension activities:
After feedback, students rerecord their response focusing on one or two points highlighted.
You could ask your students to read this review and again look for persuasive devices featured in the lesson or any of the myriad of ideas for reviews you would normally use
Alternatively, you could ask your students to look for any examples of cultural racism and the generalising of different nationalities into negative traits.
So, the origins of this lesson go back to the sunlight times when I taught the Cambridge Exams. Forster’s Howards End was a set text for, I think, CPE. I always loved the three letters that begin the book and those who have followed this blog for a long time will know a lot of the earlier lessons had a literature base. This then, is a return of sorts.
The text itself gives us the chance to do some Danny Norrington-Davies style grammar activities and the chance to really look at how we examine gist.
As always when I use some Literature in class it is only fair to draw attention to Gillian Lazar’s excellent book: Literature and Language teaching.
There is a lot of reading in this lesson and this gives us the chance to look at prepositions as part of chunks of language.
Level: advanced C1/C2 (High upper Ints could maybe manage if scaffolded well)
Aim: to examine tone and how it is conveyed in an authentic text
For all of these activities I would recommend asking the students to look on their own first and then work in pairs or groups.
Reading and Reaction
The reading here aims to give the students the chance to react more naturally to the text than the standard gist questions. Answers obviously some are subjective here. Your job is to probe the reasoning. I have put some answers below. I would give them time to read, and then put them into groups to answer the questions.
How old do you think Helen is? (Why?) perhaps young – refers to aunt, whole style of the piece
What is the relationship between Helen and Meg? sisters
Who do you think Tibby might be? brother
Who are the Wilcoxes and where did Meg and Helen meet them? family they met while travelling
What is the impression given of the Wilcoxes? Sporty – different from Helen’s family
However, accept any reasonable answers. Here the key is to encourage the students to engage and come to their own conclusions.
Vocabulary from context and co-text
This activity is about building a skill rather than teaching ‘key’ lexis. We want the students to be able to work out meaning from context and co-text. The students will enver need the word wych-elm, but they will need to be able to see when a lexical set is being referred to as it is here.
it is a tree and they can see this from the following sentence ‘I quite love that tree already’
There are 6:
‘Also ordinary elms, oaks—no nastier than ordinary oaks—pear-trees, apple-trees, and a vine. No silver birches, though’
Focus students on the reflective activity, we want them to know why we have done the task. Ask them where they can use it next.
Grammar Focus
This is about moving away from established rules and looking at why a tense or structure is used and how they work together. This can be important as a lot of students can trot out the rules for tenses but don’t seem then seem to be able to use them productively. This type of activity aims to address that.
mostly present simple as it is a series of descriptions of things as they are now. e.g. ‘it is old and little’
This extract gives the chance to see different tenses interacting.
I looked out earlier, and Mrs. Wilcox was already in the garden. She evidently loves it. No wonder she sometimes looks tired. She was watching the large red poppies come out.
Which tenses are used here? past simple / present simple / past continuous
What difference in meaning do the different tenses show us here?
Past simple – used for main activity in the anecdote
Present simple – Helen’s comments on it
Past continuous – an activity that happened over a period of time in the anecdote.
The interesting thing here is the present simple which is used in an interesting way. The other two tenses follow what we would expect in a story.
3. Now look at the conditional in the sentence below:
…if you shut your eyes it still seems the wiggly hotel that we expected.
What type of conditional is it? Does it refer to present / past / future / all time? 0 conditional talking about all time
Why is it used here? I think to give them impression of this being like a dream – the idea of being able to go back to their assumptions about the house and people who live there.
Reading and Reaction II
Now look at the letter again and answer these questions
Is there anything unusual about the letter? things have been omitted, lots of fractured sentences, the use of burn this
What impression does Helen give us about Aunt Juley? that she is boring
Can you think of three adjectives to describe Helen? Any answers fine
Use your phone to find a picture of what she looks like to you and compare with your neighbour. Any answers fine
Reading and Reaction III
All answers in this section are up to the students, you should put them into groups and let the students discuss them before coming together in all class feedback to check them.
Preposition focus
The aim here is to get the students to focus on chunks of text. Too often students think of prepositions without seeing them as part of larger chunks.
There is the secondary aim in that looking in the letters for the answers gives them scanning practise.
We can scarcely pack in as it is
… and there are the stairs going up in a sort of tunnel
I must get on to my host and hostess
… she kept on smelling it
how good of her to come
the others do not take advantage of her
I laugh at them for catching hay fever
Reflection
These questions are just to make them realise the point of the different activities so put them in groups to discuss and monitor.
There is a lot more you can do with this text if you wanted, but these are some hopefully interesting things.
So, the origin of this lesson came when I was still teaching exams. I wanted a task that replicated the skills and language needed for Speaking part 3 in FCE / CAE / CPE, I wanted to show that the language for the task had genuine use outside the exam. I also wanted it to be a bit of fun. I decided to use some music as it would allow students to use high level vocab and in the feedback sessions I would have scope to add input and also to check comprehension. There are other examples of how to use songs in class on the site, for example: https://textploitationtefl.com/2018/03/04/the-cure-pictures-of-you-present-perfect-continuous/
Anyway, in this lesson, the songs are used for a slightly different reason.
So without delay, let’s get down to it.
Time: 90 minutes
Level: Intermediate / Upper Intermediate / Advanced / FCE / CAE / CPE (it could be used with lower levels with some scaffolding)
Aim: To encourage discussion and practise decision making language.
Sub aim: Practising presenting a decision to the group.
Procedure:
Pre-listening: Select 5-7 songs that you intend to use. Try to ensure that the songs have a different feel and that they will evoke a different emotional response.
Listening
Tell the students you are going to play them 5-7 pieces of music/songs. You are only going to play about 30 seconds of each. Ask them to write down any feelings they have about the song. Tell them that you don’t want things like “I like it”, “it is rubbish”, but want adjectives or description of feelings the songs evoke or where it reminds them of being etc.
Play the songs allowing time after each for them to write up notes.
After all of the songs have been played ask the students to compare what they have written down in small groups. Try to make sure the groups are 2-4 people each.
Do group feedback, this allows you to share ideas, but also share any high level / interesting vocab.
You may need to play the songs again at this point in order for them to complete the next task.
2. Task – the script outline
Ask the students to skim read the scenes. Ask them what type / genre of film they think it is.
Then, ask students to work in groups and complete the task on the worksheet. 10-15 minutes. There may be some language that the students are unsure of. Try to elicit meanings from them. Encourage them to think about context where possible.
Task: You have been asked to select music to match the scenes. The songs we played you earlier were the ones we have the rights to. We can probably just about afford to license one more song. So if you have a suggestion for one that would work, we can probably manage that.
Direct them to the suggested language on the worksheet (please add extra language to this that you would like them to practice). Encourage as you monitor and also take notes so you can do error correction after.
Give the students 5 minutes to prepare to present their ideas to the group. Try to encourage them to use reasons. This is a chance to recycle the lexis they used earlier and to practice summarising a group discussion.
Optional: Board the different ideas for how the film ends. The students can then vote on the best.
Post task reflection: Ask the students where they can use the language that they have been practising. The aim is that they recognise that this is language that could be used in the exam. If not exam students in business discussions, meetings etc.
Also encourage the students to offer each other feedback on the language they all used. Ask the students which of the phrases they did use, which they didn’t and why. It is about them making choices about the language they use and developing their own personal lexis.
Possible extension activities:
Ask the students in groups or individually to write dialogue for part of one of the scenes. This can then be edited and improved as a writing task. You could also ask the students to film it. This is a great chance for a student to act as director and help students improve. For a similar idea: https://textploitationtefl.com/2017/07/11/modals-of-deduction-a-murder-part-1-2/
Use one of the songs and treat it as a text and textploit it. See other ideas from the song lessons on the site.
Continuing the theme of IELTS lessons, this is another that looks to help students with their exam but also their university studies after.
This looks to explore what arguments are being made and then asks students to respond to them. Stance and criticality are key elements of university study. The ability to understand a writer’s ideas and then use them in their own writing will be tested but sometimes perhaps gets lost in the IELTS classroom. This is a lesson which will work a little on reading skills, but which mostly seeks to prepare students for university. That in turn makes it suitable for any high-level class.
Of course, you can, and should, do all the other lovely textploitation things with a grammar and lexis focus.
Level: IELTS / Advanced / Proficiency
Aim: To give students an opportunity to examine a writer’s opinion and respond to it.
Procedure:
Reading Skills – Prediction
Direct Students to the worksheet and put them in pairs to discuss what the terms could mean. Focus students on the form of the words. Remember to stress the importance of prediction as a reading skill.
Read to check – Now ask the students to read the text and find out what the two terms mean. Ask the students which reading techniques they will use: ‘Scanning’ to find the terms and then ‘deeper reading’ to understand.
To check understanding and practice paraphrasing, ask the students to write their own definitions. Encourage them to think of synonyms and to use different grammar structures. This might be a time to bring in the idea of plagiarism if they haven’t discussed it before. Below are the sections of the text that would need to be paraphrased:
Universal Basic Income (UBI) is a policy whereby a financial payment is made to every citizen, unconditionally, without any obligation to work, at a level above their subsistence needs.
Half-Earth – the simple but profound idea that environmental repair could come from allocating half the Earth’s surface primarily for the benefit of other species
Reading – Note-taking
This skill will help with IELTS tasks such as matching, but it is a skill I encourage all of my students to do every time they read an exam text. Ask the students to skim read the text – set a time limit (5mins) – encourage them to take notes in the margins.
Now ask them to compare their notes to their classmates. Make your own notes and see how similar your students are.
NB The article roughly fits a situation / problem / solutions / questioning solutions and conclusion structure.
Reading – Stance and argument
Ask the students to reread the text and look for the writer’s opinions. Then follow the instructions on the worksheet.
Answers: People would still work; break link between work and consumption; ability to say no to undesirable jobs; chance to think long-term
2.
Answers: Reforesting already in action / our views on nature are forged by our society / re-establishing humans as part of nature / seems popular
note taking on different sections – explain how it helps with matching
Students’ Reactions
Ask students to work in pairs or small groups and discuss the points on the worksheet.
Writing: summary and reacting to it in an academic style to be set as homework.
When marking, encourage students for their content, don’t just mark the grammar and the vocab. Look at the structure, arguments and how they are supported and their paraphrasing / summarising skills.
So, the inspiration for this came yesterday at the Pearson Amazing Minds day in London. Ken Beatty mentioned this story and as he put up one of the direct quotations, I found myself just looking at the past tenses thinking, “ooooh, lesson”. I really am that dull.
The lesson itself is fairly standard textploitation. We have a text, we are going to look at the grammar used, look to build learner autonomy with the vocabulary and investigate a litte bit of pronunciation. Also borrowing in the grammar from the wonderful Danny Norrington-Davies ( https://dannynorringtondavies.wordpress.com/ )asking students to identify what the grammar is doing and why it is used.
Like with all textploitation this focuses on a little and often.
By the end of the lesson, students will be better able to analyse language in context and to recognise subtle differences in meaning.
Aims:
To analyse language in context (vocab / grammar)
To build the skills needed for the above
To practice the schwa and connected speech
Time: 2-3hrs
Procedure:
Pre Reading: Prediction task.
Write the phrase “I caught a falling baby” on the board and ask students what they think happened immediately before.
Ask them to create and build a back story.
Put them into pairs or groups for this.
Then do feedback as a class.
Prompt them with questions such as where did this happen / when. Also, ask them to justify these answers.
Reading: Skimming
Ask them to quickly find out:
Where the story took place?
How the baby got out of the apartment?
Why was it not surprising the woman caught the baby?
Natural Response
Place the students into small groups and ask the following questions:
Did you find the story interesting?
Did anything surprise you?
Do you think the woman is a hero?
Do you think that the parents of the baby should be punished?
(you could break these questions into two sets if you prefer)
Grammar:
Rather than looking at the whole text this lesson breaks the text into little chunks.
Make sure the students really look at the function and use of the grammar. Do not let them just trot out grammar book rules.
Exercise 1
(picture is of Christina Torre just for context and as the sheet was looking dull)
“I’ve always known that I’m very quick with my hands. If someone throws something, I catch it almost before I’m aware it has been thrown.”
present perfect and present simple
Present perfect is used to describe a skill / ability that the person has had for ever. – the adverbs ‘always’ is a natural fit here. Present simple is used for a fact / ability. Encourage the students to think of how the present perfect and present simple work with each other.
0 conditional + the present perfect time clause
0 conditional is used to refer to something that always happens “If someone throws something, I catch it”, the present perfect here relies on ‘almost before’ and I think places the time close to the first ‘throws’ in the conditional. It doesn’t neatly fit any rule, and that is important for you to get across to your students.
Exercise 2
For these put students in pairs to check before doing all class feedback.
“I was going to visit a friend with her newborn and was on my way to a toy store to buy a gift. I’d once lived in the neighbourhood and on a whim I decided to head back to my old haunt, a cupcake shop, for a coffee.” Vocabulary
On a whim (adverbial phrase) – spontaneously – normally used in positive stories. It is important to let students think about connotation as well as meaning
I decided to head back to my old haunt – My old haunt – a place i used to spend a lot of time in. Get them to give you examples of their own ‘old haunts’ and provide examples yourself. Also, worth highlighting the meaning of head back to here. Grammar
Past version of be going to used to talk about a plan that did not happen.
Past simple used for the main actions in the story.
Past perfect used to refer to a time before the time of this story.
Extra – ask if they can find other examples of these tenses being used.
Exercise 3
“I just wanted the child, who I later found out was called Dillon, to feel safe”
extra info
yes
(if they ask about why there seem to be two clauses in the relative clause I told them that find out always needs an object) sentence could be rewritten as just “who was called Dillon”. If they don’t ask, I wouldn’t raise it at this stage)
Exercise 4
We didn’t practise together, but I guess my reflexes must have naturally developed.
it could fit in the beginning, between the clauses, or at the end. (Though) We didn’t practise together, (though) I guess my reflexes must have naturally developed (though).
The first place sounds more formal, the middle is possible but quite informal(to me, not so natural), the end is also informal
I was approached by a typical Brooklyn older man, who in a calm and very matter-of-fact way told me to call 911, because there was a baby on a fire escape.
because –> as / since
because (informal / neutral), as (neutral), since (formal)
(If you wanted here you could extend this by asking them to rewrite using ‘despite’ or in the second sentence maybe think about restructing using ‘so’
Exercise 5
“what would have happened if I hadn’t caught him.”
“if we let intuition lead us, we can deal with anything.”
A – elicit the form from students
Imaginary / hypothetical past – to talk about regrets or how situations could have turned out differently. “If I hadn’t been late, she wouldn’t have dumped me”
It talks about every time / general time. It is general advice for the future.
It is used at the end, to provide a motivating ending / student’s own answers may be more interesting than that.
Exercise 6
Vocabulary
This is focused on developing learner autonomy, so do not let them use dictionaries until they have tried to work out the meaning themselves. Explain why, get them to think of substituting other words etc.
looking around nonchalantly – without a care
baby boy became my only priority. – my main focus
Apparently he had slipped through pieces of cardboard – people told me (might suggest surprise)
Instinctively, he grabbed on as he fell, – without thought
my attention was purely focused on my intention to catch the baby – purely means solely or only here
As he tumbled, he hit a protruding plastic sign – tumbled – fell / protruding – it was sticking out
it turned out it was only his lip that had been cut – we later found out
Dillon’s parents had been woken by the commotion – the noise and fuss
Exercise 6
The reality of saving someone’s life is intense. I play it over in my head so many times, I think it has changed me. I am calm and more at ease with things. I study mindfulness, and I see now that if we let intuition lead us, we can deal with anything. I think I was meant to be there.
This paragraph has present simple / present perfect / past simple and a 0 conditional. Again get them to think about why each tense is used – sometimes the reasons are not the same as earlier.
Pronunciation
The idea is to look at the schwa and the effect that it has on rhythm when we are speaking.
Schwas are in bold (different native speakers may decide differently. To me, this is the most likely.) Connected words underlined
‘The reality of saving someone’s life is intense. I play itover in my head so many times’
Ask the students to practice saying the words, model and drill, but really focus on the schwa and the connected words.
If you wanted to do further work, you could ask them to work in pairs and select another piece of direct speech and examine it, looking for the same features.
Further practice:
You could ask students to find a news story that they found interesting and examine the grammar in it. Bringing it to a future class and asking them to explain it to others in a group and discussing it.
This is going to be the first in a mini series of lessons on connotations. Why bother looking at connotations? Well, there are a few reasons, firstly, for students being able to say precisely what they mean without misunderstanding is key. Secondly, can you really know a word without understanding the implications its use has to those who read it and hear it. Finally, for some students, especially those in CAE or CPE classes a lack of knowledge of connotation can prevent high scores in the Use of English paper.
This whole idea was triggered by my colleague William Tweddle, talking about teaching vocabulary and highlighting the difference in connotation between Opium and Heroin. They are both effectively the same thing and yet with one we conjure images of poets languidly lying in beautiful rooms on divans, music wafting in with the opium haze. The other conjures images of junkies, needles, misery and grime. No surprise which has a perfume named after it.
Aims: To raise awareness of how important connotation is when learning vocabulary
Level: Upper Intermediate / Advanced
Procedure:
Discussion
The aim here is to raise awareness of how heroin / opium are perceived
Dictionary example from OUP: “A reddish-brown heavy-scented addictive drug prepared from the juice of the opium poppy, used illicitly as a narcotic and occasionally in medicine as an analgesic.”
They will probably find the word ‘drug’ / heroin and the fact it is addictive.
The aim is to have a discussion on the name but leading to the point that Heroin and Opium have very different connotations.
Activity 1
Remind students here that we are really looking for the best answer. All of them could be used.
answers:
affordable – now possible to buy
good value – the price is fair
cheap – perhaps low quality
Emphasis that cheap can have a neutral use too.
As an extension, you could ask the students to write a sentence for inexpensive and put the best on the board.
Activity 2
Obviously there is no correct answer here, but it is worth checking with students the meanings
thin – neutral though sometimes used in a negative sense
skinny – negative – too thin
slender – positive – also contains an idea of elegance
slim – positive – in good shape
Activity 3
a gossip
a chatty person
a chatterbox
The best synonym for talkative is chatty, but perhaps chatty focuses more on informal chats.
Activity 4
A chance to use those words in a longer text.
1.
“So, last week I went to a party with a friend, she’s lovely but she is a bit of a chatterbox, so I know I can never tell her too much. Anyway, when we got to the party we went to the kitchen to find some food. I wasn’t expecting anything amazing, but I really did hope that there would be something other than affordable crisps. If I had known, I would have brought some nibbles myself. There again, I am supposed to be on a bit of a diet. I don’t want to get too slender, but I would like to be a bit slimmer. The party was ok I suppose, I didn’t stay long, especially after I got stuck talking to this one guy. He was a chatterbox and friendly, but so boring. I didn’t spend any money though, so it was a good value evening I suppose. That’s something!”
2.
a chatterbox – a gossip
affordable – cheap
slender – thin / skinny
slimmer – fine
a chatterbox – chatty / talkative
good value – cheap / inexpensive (if the article is changed)
Reflection activity – get students to think about how they could record connotations and their differences in their note books.
Extra activity pronunciation
Eradicating the robots.
Ask students to record themselves saying the improved dialogue and save it.
Drill any words you hear being mispronounced.
You can then look at where they should be pausing. Highlight the punctuation and also get them to think about where the stress should be in each clause – what is the important information?
After they have practised a few times get them to think about tone – how does the speaker feel – ask them to practice this again taking this into account.
Ask the students to rerecord and listen back to both versions and reflect on how the second is an improvement.
textploitation 
