Tefl summary chapter 4
Learning teaching by Scrivener
1. individuals and groups:
Students respond to the way you respond to them.
It’s tempting for a teacher (or school) to view a class as a fairly homogenous group
with a single ‘level’ and similar behaviour, preferences, interests and ways of
working.
Motivation:
External motivation is that many students have strong external reasons why they
want to study (to get an exam pass, to enter university, to get a promotion, to please
their parents, etc.).
Internal motivation is that students may be studying just for rewards within the work
itself. (the fun of learning, setting oneself a personal challenge, etc.)
In either case, the strength of their motivation will be a factor in determining how
seriously they approach the work, how much time they set aside for it, how hard they
push themselves, etc.
A frequent cause of difficulties within classes is when there is a significant mismatch
of motivation levels amongst the course participants.
Multiple intelligences:
People could have seven ‘intelligences’ according to Howard Gardener but probably
in different proportions:
1. linguistic.
2. visual.
3. musical.
4. logical/mathematical.
5. bodily/feeling.
6. interpersonal (contact with other people).
7. intrapersonal (understanding oneself).
Sensory preferences:
Writers in the field of NLP (Neuro-Linguistic Programming) have noted that humans
tend to have different sensory preferences, ie some people respond best to hearing
things (auditory), others to seeing them (visual), while others learn best when they
can touch and feel tangible, physical objects (kinaesthetic). When planning classes,
you may naturally bias lesson ideas towards your own sensory preferences.
With large classes, the priority seems to be to maintain the sense of progress and to
hope that as many people can keep up as possible.
A teacher can maximise at every individual’s level, fulfilling as many wishes and
needs as possible while also keeping the entire group engaged. This is called the
classic balancing act.
, A teacher can also teach very little to a whole-class, because they think that it
generally won’t work because of the variety of people in a class.
It is hard to know how best to work with individuals if you know nothing at all about
them.
2. what level are my students?
Common level structures in schools:
Advanced
Upper intermediate
Intermediate
Pre-intermediate
Elementary
Beginner
Each of these levels may be subdivided. Schools often plan progress on an
assumption that it will take the average learner a certain period of time to move from
one level to the next.
Other level system from the Council of Europe:
C2 mastery = nearly native-speaker level
C1 operational proficiency = advanced
B2 vantage = upper intermediate/post-intermediate
B1 threshold = intermediate
A2 waystage = pre-intermediate
A3 breakthrough = beginner/elementary
There is also the Cambridge ESOL exam suite of KET, PET, FCE, CAE, CPE.
IELTS is another important exam, often taken by people who want to go to another
country for employment or to study. However, a learner of an IELTS exam might be
anywhere between Intermediate and Advanced.
Mixed level classes:
Mixed level problems:
- Grouping by age: in secondary school, students are often grouped by age and this
seems very likely to lead to problems if some learners are significantly stronger or
weaker than others.
- Keeping groups together: for schools it is easier to keep groups together class after
class. But because learners will progress at different speeds, this means that, even if
a group was similar in level at the start of a course, there may be very different ‘exit
levels’ at the end. If that class now continues en masse to the next course level, the
differences between participants will become more and more pronounced.
- Placement testing: placement by language level sounds sensible, but even this can
be problematic, because an overall ‘level’ only gives a very general idea as to how
Learning teaching by Scrivener
1. individuals and groups:
Students respond to the way you respond to them.
It’s tempting for a teacher (or school) to view a class as a fairly homogenous group
with a single ‘level’ and similar behaviour, preferences, interests and ways of
working.
Motivation:
External motivation is that many students have strong external reasons why they
want to study (to get an exam pass, to enter university, to get a promotion, to please
their parents, etc.).
Internal motivation is that students may be studying just for rewards within the work
itself. (the fun of learning, setting oneself a personal challenge, etc.)
In either case, the strength of their motivation will be a factor in determining how
seriously they approach the work, how much time they set aside for it, how hard they
push themselves, etc.
A frequent cause of difficulties within classes is when there is a significant mismatch
of motivation levels amongst the course participants.
Multiple intelligences:
People could have seven ‘intelligences’ according to Howard Gardener but probably
in different proportions:
1. linguistic.
2. visual.
3. musical.
4. logical/mathematical.
5. bodily/feeling.
6. interpersonal (contact with other people).
7. intrapersonal (understanding oneself).
Sensory preferences:
Writers in the field of NLP (Neuro-Linguistic Programming) have noted that humans
tend to have different sensory preferences, ie some people respond best to hearing
things (auditory), others to seeing them (visual), while others learn best when they
can touch and feel tangible, physical objects (kinaesthetic). When planning classes,
you may naturally bias lesson ideas towards your own sensory preferences.
With large classes, the priority seems to be to maintain the sense of progress and to
hope that as many people can keep up as possible.
A teacher can maximise at every individual’s level, fulfilling as many wishes and
needs as possible while also keeping the entire group engaged. This is called the
classic balancing act.
, A teacher can also teach very little to a whole-class, because they think that it
generally won’t work because of the variety of people in a class.
It is hard to know how best to work with individuals if you know nothing at all about
them.
2. what level are my students?
Common level structures in schools:
Advanced
Upper intermediate
Intermediate
Pre-intermediate
Elementary
Beginner
Each of these levels may be subdivided. Schools often plan progress on an
assumption that it will take the average learner a certain period of time to move from
one level to the next.
Other level system from the Council of Europe:
C2 mastery = nearly native-speaker level
C1 operational proficiency = advanced
B2 vantage = upper intermediate/post-intermediate
B1 threshold = intermediate
A2 waystage = pre-intermediate
A3 breakthrough = beginner/elementary
There is also the Cambridge ESOL exam suite of KET, PET, FCE, CAE, CPE.
IELTS is another important exam, often taken by people who want to go to another
country for employment or to study. However, a learner of an IELTS exam might be
anywhere between Intermediate and Advanced.
Mixed level classes:
Mixed level problems:
- Grouping by age: in secondary school, students are often grouped by age and this
seems very likely to lead to problems if some learners are significantly stronger or
weaker than others.
- Keeping groups together: for schools it is easier to keep groups together class after
class. But because learners will progress at different speeds, this means that, even if
a group was similar in level at the start of a course, there may be very different ‘exit
levels’ at the end. If that class now continues en masse to the next course level, the
differences between participants will become more and more pronounced.
- Placement testing: placement by language level sounds sensible, but even this can
be problematic, because an overall ‘level’ only gives a very general idea as to how
