Date post: | 06-May-2015 |
Category: |
Education |
Upload: | vanesa-juarez |
View: | 1,581 times |
Download: | 4 times |
SECONDARY EDUCATION TEACHING MASTER
DIDACTIC PROPOSALS TO DEAL
WITH LACK OF MOTIVATION IN
THE ENGLISH CLASSROOM
VANESA JUÁREZ PARÍS
FINAL PROJECT
ENGLISH SPECIALITY
2012/2013
1
INDEX
Introduction
� Presentation of the Final Project in the English teaching specialty in the
Obligatory Secondary Education ............................................................................ 3
� Centre and group where the innovative didactic suggestion is applied ......... 4
Proposal of the educational innovation
Objectives and justification of the project ................................................................... 6
Theoretical Framework
� Dealing with lack of motivation ....................................................................... 9
� Teaching-learning strategies of the project ..................................................... 9
Observation and proposals of every session ............................................................... 11
� Session one – 4th
/April
o Observations ........................................................................................ 12
o Methodological and didactic suggestions ............................................ 13
o Description of an alternative session for R3 ........................................ 15
� Session two – 11th
/April
o Observations ........................................................................................ 17
o Methodological and didactic suggestions ............................................ 18
o Description of an alternative session for R3 ........................................ 20
� Session three– 18th
/April
o Observations ........................................................................................ 21
o Methodological and didactic suggestions ............................................ 22
o Description of an alternative session for R3 ........................................ 24
� Exam Unit 6 comments .................................................................................... 26
� Session four– 25th
/April
o Observations ........................................................................................ 27
o Methodological and didactic suggestions ............................................ 28
o Description of an alternative session for R3 ........................................ 29
� Session five – 2nd
/May
o Observations ........................................................................................ 31
o Methodological and didactic suggestions ............................................ 32
o Description of an alternative session for R3 ........................................ 33
2
� Session six – 7th
/May
o Observations ........................................................................................ 34
o Methodological and didactic suggestions ............................................ 35
o Description of an alternative session for R3 ........................................ 36
� Session seven 16th
/May
o Observations ........................................................................................ 37
o Methodological and didactic suggestions ............................................ 38
o Description of an alternative session for R3 ........................................ 39
Conclusions .................................................................................................... 40
Bibliography .................................................................................................. 42
Appendices
� Appendix I : ....................................................................................................... 44
� Appendix II : ...................................................................................................... 45
� Appendix III : ..................................................................................................... 46
� Appendix IV: ..................................................................................................... 47
� Appendix V: ...................................................................................................... 47
� Appendix VI: ..................................................................................................... 48
� Appendix VII : ................................................................................................... 49
� Appendix VIII : .................................................................................................. 50
� Appendix IX : ..................................................................................................... 50
� Appendix X : ...................................................................................................... 51
� Appendix XI : ..................................................................................................... 52
� Appendix XII : .................................................................................................... 54
� Appendix XIII :................................................................................................... 54
� Appendix XIV : .................................................................................................. 58
� Appendix XV : ................................................................................................... 61
� Appendix XVI : .................................................................................................. 62
� Appendix XVII : ................................................................................................. 62
� Appendix XVIII : ................................................................................................ 63
� Appendix XIX : .................................................................................................. 63
� Appendix XX : ................................................................................................... 64
� Appendix XXI : .................................................................................................. 65
� Appendix XXII : ................................................................................................. 66
� Appendix XXIII : ................................................................................................ 67
� Appendix XXIV: ................................................................................................. 68
� Appendix XXV ................................................................................................... 69
3
INTRODUCTION
Presentation of the Final Project in the English Obligatory Secondary
Education teaching specialty.
The present project is a collection of didactic proposals that in the form of improvements of
the methods often used to explain, practice and present the activities done in the English
language Secondary Education class, tries to be an innovative way of teaching English,
without changing the curriculum already set by the Catalan Educational Department. These
proposals are aimed at a particular student profile that lacks academic motivation and
shares the classroom with students with the same problem by the decision of an educational
centre.
During my Practicum I and II, I had the chance to observe three different groups of a same
ESO year, each defined by its own level of difficulty, which was established by the student’s
limitations that the teachers of every subject thought they had. In the case of the English
language subject, the group Rhythm 1 (R1), the one supposed to have the higher level of the
three, followed a course book in a traditional way, by explaining the contents of every unit
and completing the corresponding activities proposed by the book. In Rhythm 2 (R2), the
teachers tried to follow the same strategy, but the students lacked a lot of motivation and
their bad attitude did not let the teachers make considerable progress. Rhythm 3 (R3) was
normally more submissive in attitude terms, but their self-esteem was very low and they had
assumed the idea that going to school was useless and dull, so their effort to pass the
subject was minimum, and therefore, the teacher had to follow an easier course book and
demand significantly much less than to what was demanded to R1.
During my practicum, I worked with 3rd
of ESO R1, but I had a chance to observe all the other
groups of R1, R2 and R3 of different years. Many times I had the feeling that if the activities
were presented more attractively and in a way in which the students could participate more
as individuals, the tasks could become more dynamic and interesting, not only for them, but
even for me as an observer and sometimes a second teacher, since I would get bored many
times during the classes. I never had the chance to teach a R3 group during my Practicum,
and yet, I would become very intrigued with 2nd
of ESO R3 in particular, because I would
wonder if those students had an age in which academic motivation could still be instilled
through the idea that learning could be interesting, fulfilling, or even fun sometimes. A big
change in the maturity of the students could be seen in 3rd
of ESO R3, since they seemed to
be less innocent than a year before, and therefore, more reluctant to change their negative
4
ideas about school. 4th
of ESO R3 was already a very difficult group in which many students
had very deeply assumed their academic failure and their poor prospects for the future in
economic terms, especially those who did not believe they would get their Secondary
Education certificate.
So, from these reflections during my Practicum at the educational centre I was assigned, I
got the key idea to start and develop this Master’s Final Project. I decided I would make
research to learn about methods and activities that could beat more successfully the lack of
motivation while being effective enough to teach the same content and skills indicated in
the official curriculum that students of 2nd
of ESO are supposed to learn in their English
language subject. Then, I would go every Thursday to the centre, observe what 2nd
of ESO R1
would do in terms of activities and instructional explanations, and then compare it to what it
was done in 2nd
of ESO R3. Finally, I would try to become creative myself and transform the
activities observed in both groups taking into account the research I had made, and design
proposals to be applied to 2nd
of ESO R3. This seemed to me a very enriching task personally
as a future teacher, but also a useful project that could motivate other teachers to be always
creative with the preparation of their lessons, especially if they are aimed at difficult
students that need their teachers not only to learn English and accomplish the official
curriculum, but also to stimulate and inspire them, so these students believe more in
themselves and get motivated again with their academic experience.
Centre and group where the innovative didactic suggestion is applied
The educational centre I was assigned for my Practicum I and II, and in which I take my
observations in order to develop the present project, is the IES Miquel Crusafont I Pairò, a
small Secondary Education centre placed on the outskirts of Sabadell. It is a CAEP centre
(Preferential Educational Attention Centre), which means that it is a centre located in an
unfavourable social and economic surroundings and in which students generally have
difficulties to achieve the general objective of the basic education due to their social and
cultural conditions. The centre decided to have only two administrative lines in ESO and one
in Batxillerat, but choosing a grouping based on rhythms which made diversity attention
easier to work with in the case of the ESO students.
A R1 group is made of the approximately thirty better-focused students of a year, whereas a
R2 group holds the others that are supposed to create more trouble in class and have worse
academic results. Because of the difficulty found by teachers when dealing with the latter, a
third group is created, R3, and holds the ones that are not that difficult to deal with in terms
5
of attitude, but are supposed to be much slower than R1.The R1 group is assessed mainly in
terms of concepts and through the grades students get from their written work along the
trimester and from the unit exams. In the case of the R3 group, students are assessed taking
into account mainly their attitude and the effort shown to complete activities in class. Exams
are not taken so much into account and students know it, which could be a reason why the
R3 group normally does not study to pass these tests.
The group to which the innovative proposals of this project are applied is 2nd
of ESO R3,
which normally is formed by 8-10, – there are two students from the Open Classroom (Aula
Oberta) who only attend from time to time. I also observe the group 2nd
of ESO R1 and
compare what they do in class with what the group 2nd
of ESO R3 do. The English lessons of
the R3 group take place on Wednesday at 9:00, on Thursday at 13:30 and on Friday at 12:30,
whereas those of the R1 group take place on Monday at 9:00, on Wednesday at 10:00 and
on Thursday at 11:30. I was only able to go to the centre on Thursdays and observe only one
hour a week of both groups.
6
PROPOSAL OF THE EDUCATIONAL
INNOVATION
OBJECTIVES AND JUSTIFICATION OF THE PROJECT
The majority of obligatory education centres in Catalonia have several lines of the same ESO
year due to the big amount of students of the same age. In each line of an ESO year, they are
taught exactly the same contents and procedures which are programmed by the teacher,
which is normally the same one for all the lines. However, there are some centres in which,
due to the huge difference in diversity and level of cognitive development of the students,
they decide to divide the lines taking into account this difference of rhythm of learning. The
same way that it seems fair that in a standard centre every line of an ESO year receives the
same education than the others, I think that in centres where students are separated into
rhythms it is fair to apply the same curriculum as well, in every subject of their curriculum.
Another matter is the need of adaptation in terms of methodology, so that, in the rhythms in
which students are less mature or have more concentration difficulties in comparison with
other students of their own age, they can learn the same content and develop the same
competences that they are supposed to acquire during the ESO years in an easier way for
them. This is not always the case in centres in which students are separated by rhythms,
since teachers many times confuse the idea of adaptation with a change of contents so they
are easier for the slower lines, especially when they are teachers that have spent many years
teaching this kind of groups trying to apply the same methodologies they apply to the faster
ones and are disheartened by the poor results they get. At this point, teachers assume the
erroneous idea that these adolescents belonging to these lower rhythm groups are totally
unable to be good students, due to their lack of concentration and, in many cases, their
ability to take to pieces the class because of their belief that school is not useful for them
and it is just an obligation they have to endure as they can, even if it is misbehaving every
time they get bored.
The problem with these students from lower level rhythms is generally one of lack of
motivation, which does not let them see the need to make an effort to get good marks in
their studies in order to have a better future when they finish school. In fact, there are a few
students with this profile also in the higher level rhythms, but because these groups tend to
be bigger in number, these students may get neutralized in attitude terms, although they
never really follow the class as their classmates, and lag considerably behind. When that is
7
the case and they cannot follow the level, they do not complain as students from lower
rhythms many times do, because they feel too embarrassed in front of their classmates. It is
true that the lower rhythms sometimes admit the participation of students from the Open
Classroom (Aula Oberta), who are adolescents that have a real cognitive problem that does
not let them follow a normal class rhythm for their age. These students need a specially
adapted curriculum and many times, an extra educator next to them to be able to follow
what the teacher is explaining.
However, the majority of students belonging to the lower level rhythms are capable enough
to follow a normal class, but they just do not see the point because they have never had
good study habits and do not know what it feels to fulfil academic challenges, normally not
even from the Primary school years. This should not be a reason to let them achieve their
Obligatory Secondary Education with a poorer acquisition of the contents and basic skills
they are supposed get when they are sixteen years old. Since these students cannot be
motivated in terms of getting good marks because they do not have confidence enough to
stick to long-term rewards, as it is getting their ESO certificate, they could be motivated in a
different way, by showing them that every day, in every class, they can achieve more
immediate rewards, such as learning something interesting and prove to themselves they
can acquire it and use it with a particular purpose.
English is a subject these students find particularly difficult and boring, since they cannot use
this foreign language in a practical way until they have learned the features of the language
itself. That is why teachers usually follow traditional methods of learning English such as
asking the students to translate a lot of vocabulary with a dictionary, or complete many fill-in
activities in a book, even if they know these methods do not really work unless students
memorize such vocabulary or practice their grammar in oral activities. But to ask the
students to concentrate and work on the same book for 50 minutes – which is not very
advisable anyway but that could work with students which are motivated by the idea of
passing the subject – does not work with students who are sent to these slower rhythm
groups and who lack any kind of academic motivation. In the English class, these students
soon get bored and lose concentration during a task; they do not see the point of what they
are doing and stop working and desperately look for possible distractions such as talking to
other classmates, drawing pictures on their notebooks, or even getting up and walking
around the classroom with the excuse of throwing something to the bin or having something
“very important” to say to a classmate that is sitting on the other side of the room.
The students of lower rhythm’s groups need a better set of strategies that can make them
forget about their frustration with studies while they are in class. Normally, these students
8
have been in this situation for years and not only with the English language subject, but with
their general academic performance. That is why such strategies should allow the teacher
draw their attention to the present moment and set more immediate and simple objectives
that students can easily spot and want to achieve. The strategies chosen and the way in
which they are adapted to a group in order to increase their attention and their motivation
can vary a lot depending on the kind of students. That is why all the proposals suggested in
this work are illustrated taking into account a real case, 2nd
of ESO R3, which is described in
the previous section. As I mentioned before, this 2nd
of ESO group is considered to have a
very low learning rhythm when teachers have tried to apply the same strategies used with
the students of the 2nd
of ESO R1. Also, it should be taken into account that in this
educational centre students are used to a way of teaching that tends to be less audio visually
supported, less related to the students’ personal interests and more monotonous and
mechanical in terms of activities than it should be when adapting the curriculum to students
that lack autonomy, motivation and an ability to concentrate on academic tasks.
In this project, all the activities observed in 2nd
R1 are therefore refined in all these aspects
that can be useful to abstract students from their self-conscious lack of motivation and their
self-beliefs related to what they are capable of doing with English. A strategy I now consider
very important after observing this very same group during my practicum II is to make the
students feel they are not doing conventional class activities. I do not mean that students
have to believe they are just playing games, but they need to feel they are doing something
different that can challenge them in a different way. When this has been the case, in some
occasions during the practicum, I have seen students more motivated feeling that they had
the opportunity to prove their capability with studies in a new way, especially if it gave them
the chance to contribute in the class in a more personal way. When they could contribute in
that way, they could feel as important as the rest of their classmates, something crucial to
increase their self-confidence and contribute to a more positive creation of a possible self.
I think this ideal situation should be constantly recreated in class so that, little by little,
students consider the classroom a space in which they relate learning English with having a
good time in which they can be themselves. The way in which the activities are prepared and
presented by the teacher is very important to make students feel such relation, regardless of
the content and the procedures indicated in the curriculum that the teachers are supposed
to teach. Creativity and the need to keep improving when preparing the classes are also
basic requirements to be a good teacher. These teaching principals want to be the base of
the following proposals, along with a solid base of knowledge of the didactic methods that
could work better in a specific situation, which in this case are gathered in the bibliography
that appears at the end of this project and which are summarized in the following section.
9
THEORETICAL FRAMEWORK
Dealing with lack of motivation
When preparing the alternative sessions in this project, I always kept in mind a set of
principles dealing with the motivation of the students in order to reduce the effect of
previous academic failure and frustration on the student’s future performance. There are
two main ideas that define these principles. The first idea, and a one that the teacher always
needs to take into account in class, is that students get more interested in the learning of
English if the topic seems new for them and is presented in an attractive way (Escaño, Gil de
la Serna, 2008). The second is that the experiences that are lived in an emotional way are
better recalled and remembered in a longer term, so what is learned in an emotional way
becomes better consolidated by the students (Gallego, Gallego, 2004).
In order to attract the students to the topic of the class, the teacher has to include significant
communicative situations in all the sessions. They are perfect to get the student’s attention
and to make them see that they have the opportunity to participate and be active in an
environment that the teacher is presenting as interesting and comfortable for them (Besalú,
Tort, 2009). In these class conversations it is when the students can get involved in a
personal and emotional way and the knowledge can be cognitively better consolidated. This
also helps to improve the level of the self esteem of the students, since it is in these
communicative moments that the teacher has the chance to create situations in which the
students feel valuable and become aware that what they achieve in class is useful for the
rest of their classmates (Thorne, 2008). The objective is that students create new and more
positive expectations about their experience with the study of the English language. To
achieve that, the teacher has to encourage the students to talk about themselves and listen
to others, and share their reflections and aspirations with the English language in a friendly
environment (Fukada, Fukuda, Falout, & Murphey, 2011). That is why such significant
communicative situations become basic to motivate the students.
Teaching-learning strategies of the project
In the present project I also include a series of strategies dealing with teaching and learning
English in order to improve the dynamics and methodological results of the sessions.
Consequently, these strategies will help the teacher achieve the objectives dealing with the
students’ motivation. The first suggestion is that the teacher makes sure that there is an
alternation of different kinds of activities during the sessions, so students feel stimulated
and willing to participate (Besalú, Tort, 2009), and also that they have the opportunity to
10
develop all the communication skills needed to learn English – reading, listening, speaking
and writing. Also, the teacher could organize the sessions in terms of time, including some
moments that were repeated and turned into routines, and in terms of space, so every task
had its own class distribution and the sessions were more dynamic (Escaño, Gil de la Serna,
2008).
Another important suggestion made in this project is that most of the alternated activities
carried out during the sessions are significant communicative situations. Therefore, the
classes could begin with a presentation of the topic – or recapitulation if started in previous
sessions – to make it interesting and catch the attention of the students. Then, the students
should be encouraged to talk about the topic and explain what they already know and what
they would like to learn about it. This kind of class discussion helps students develop critical-
thinking skills and their English communication skills in an authentic situation (Escaño, Gil de
la Serna 2008). Another routine to be included in the sessions should be to finish the classes
by getting the students together – it could be with the chairs in the shape of half a circle so
they could see the teacher in the middle for a better experience – and all the students were
encouraged to recapitulate and reflect about the session. This way, the students have the
opportunity to comment about the sessions and feel they also have a voice. Moreover, the
teacher can learn about the student’s experience with English and see what strategies
worked and which did not, in order to improve for the next sessions (Ferreiro, 2006).
One more important suggestion is to always make students aware of the objective of what
they do in class so there is a chance for the students to get motivated and creative, and feel
responsible about the current task (Bernaus, 1995). In order to turn the tasks into an
attainable objective for the students, it is very important to make such an objective very
clear, because sometimes it may not be that obvious for the students (Escaño, Gil de la
Serna, 2010). It is advisable to give a realistic context to the tasks so they become enriching
in regard to the competences and skills to be developed, and so the students feel challenged
enough without feeling disheartened (Vilella, 2013). Apart from the objectives of the
session, it is important that the teacher makes the students aware of the logical connections
between what was learned in the previous sessions and what is going to be learned in the
next ones (Mercer, 2001), and that he/she creates zones of proximal development that
make it easier for the students to understand the new knowledge and to build their own
learning process (Onrubia, 1993). It could also be interesting to involve the students in a
discussion in which they give their opinion about the assessing objectives and tasks that
appear in the exams, so they feel more encouraged to prepare for their evaluation (Onrubia,
Fillat, Martínez and Udina, 1998). Another way to stimulate the students for the wish of
more English language knowledge is to make evident the relations between what is learned
at school and how such knowledge can be used in real life (Perrenoud, 1999).
11
Moreover, in this project it is suggested that learning strategies are taught to the students,
so they have tools to deal with the English learning and feel more autonomous when
studying. Some of these strategies are to categorize the new vocabulary into kinds so it is
better memorized by the students (Nogales, Sancho, 2008), to take notes while watching a
video or doing a listening, so the activity is not passive and the new knowledge becomes
better processed by the students (Ferreiro, 2006), to make use of repetition but in a
consistent way, so it is processed in the long-term memory of the students (De Jong Perfetti,
2011), or to focus on the vocabulary without forgetting the grammar, since that helps
students to get more fluent with their English when participating in class (Hilton, 2008).
Another invaluable learning strategy that the students should be taught is cooperative work.
By working in groups, students that have more trouble working alone because they get more
distracted or find the tasks too difficult to be solved by themselves can find the help of their
classmates and feel more satisfied with their own contributions (Pujolàs, 2008/Torrego,
Negro, 2012). Also, cooperative work is a perfect strategy to create a constant significant
communicative situation during the sessions. A summary table of the theoretical framework
can be found in appendix I.
OBSERVATIONS AND PROPOSALS FOR EVERY SESSION
The classes last fifty minutes approximately, especially those of R1, in which students come
after the break and may not all of them be ready until 11:35 and not completely
concentrated on the task until 11:40. The teacher also has to spend some time turning on
the computer, in both groups, something that can take around 5 minutes. Both groups
normally start correcting some homework, although if that is a rule in R1, it is not always the
case in R3. So, while the computer is turning on, the teacher is usually checking table by
table who has done the homework, and afterwards, prepares to correct the homework
along with the whole group. All the R1 sessions described in this paper take place in a big
room that can gather the thirty students comfortably, and they never get to work with
laptops or in the computer room because there are more students than computers. In the
case of R3, most Thursdays go and work in the computer room because it is a small group
that never surpasses the fifteen students.
In terms of attitude, the R1 group normally has more patience when dealing with activities in
which one student participates at a time than the R3 group. In the latter, there are always a
couple of students that disrupt the class on purpose because they get bored and restless or
because they need to get the attention of the rest of the class. In the R1 group there are also
12
two or three students that are normally told off by the teacher, but these are more
neutralized by the presence of many other students that are behaving correctly. As for the
materials normally used, in the R1 group they use the Interface course book, both the
student’s book and the workbook, and sometimes photocopies from other sources chosen
by the teacher. In the case of the R3 group, and by the decision of the English department of
the centre, they use a simplified version of the Interface workbook called Interface basics,
which is designed by the same publisher to help students with special needs. However, the
teacher giving these lessons considers that this workbook is very limited and boring, so she
prepares many photocopies from other sources, especially the Internet, where she searches
for many other activities related to the topic they are dealing with at a particular moment.
Session one – 4th/April
� Observations:
Both groups had just started unit 6 from the book – called ‘make a difference’ – and before
this session of the 4th
of April, students had already been introduced to the first vocabulary
topic of the unit, which is ‘jobs’. However, the homework that the R1 group corrected at the
beginning of the class was a reading that had to do with the world’s water day and the water
crisis, which is in the second page of the Student’s book of the unit. Most of the students
had read the text and completed the activities in their notebooks for homework and, in
general, it seemed a topic that students found interesting and had comments and questions
to make about. On the other hand, for homework, the R3 group students had to bring a
piece of paper with ten names of jobs they wanted written down and with the translation
next to every word. The idea was that these jobs were new words for them that they had
looked up at home, although most of the students just wrote the ones they knew plus others
they had translated directly from Spanish and were wrong. Three students had not even
done them, so the teacher gave them a piece of paper and a pocket dictionary and asked
them to do it in class before passing to the next activity.
The main task in the R1 group was to create a class discussion about jobs and what students
would like to do in the future by using the Bureau of Labor Statistics website from the United
States department of labour (appendix I). This educational website is nicely presented with
the general question ‘What do you like?’ and some of the possible answers could be
‘reading’, ‘social studies’, ‘building and fixing things’, ‘maths’, ‘helping people’, etc. The
teacher asked students to choose one, and then have a look at the different options at every
field. If the students chose ‘law’, for example, the teacher opened the hyperlink and
different options came out, such as ‘police officer’, ‘court reporter’, ‘judge’ or ‘paralegal’,
and these jobs were commented among the whole class. Some of these jobs were totally
13
new for the students because they were not the usual ones taught at this age. That seemed
to make students more interested and willing to ask questions. Every job had a summary of
quick facts including the median pay, the entry-level education, needed training or previous
work experience, etc. This information caught the students’ attention, especially the median
pay and the outlook, probably because the topic made them start thinking what kind of job
they would like to have in the future, not only in terms of what they liked doing, but
economically. There was a particular moment in which students got very much into the class
conversation because many of them could not believe that to be a farmer it is needed to
have an education, even though it was specified in the website and the teacher
corroborated it. This was a perfect significant communicative opportunity to ask students to
speak in English to discuss and overcome some worth commenting stereotypes. It was
interesting for the students to see how jobs work in the United States, but maybe it would
also had been engaging to talk a little bit about the situation of the jobs in Spain.
The main task for the R3 group was to complete every multiple choice activity about ‘jobs
and professions’ listed in a website called Agenda Web, which is a page where there are lots
of activities gathered from different websites. Then, students had to type the score they had
got next to the name of every website in a word document. They also had a table under the
list in which they had to fill it with ten names of new jobs they did not know before doing the
activities on the computer. Some examples of these online activities can be found in
appendix II. Students were supposed to use an online dictionary when they did not know the
meaning of the words and then relate the jobs with the tasks related. The teacher had
looked for as many activities as possible in order to fill the whole hour, all very similar and a
bit repetitive, which just had to do with vocabulary related to the topic. Students were fine
doing this task at the beginning, since they appreciate a change of classroom and the
possibility of using computers. However, after completing one or two activities, they got
bored and some started looking for the attention of other classmates to entertain
themselves. The teacher and me, because I offered as a volunteer to help, were going table
by table checking that the students were actually working and had no problems to continue
their task. Nonetheless, even though they were only ten students, two teachers were very
few in order to help students that were working individually for the whole hour.
� Didactic suggestions:
One main problem with this session given to the R3 group was that it was made of just one
long activity, which was to complete a long list of online multiple choice vocabulary
activities, a task that can become never-ending and dull for any student. Because of this,
even though the teacher could have thought that these activities could be completed in a
short period of time, the students would make it longer, because they needed to get
distracted every time they did not feel motivated to continue and needed to start talking to
14
other classmates. Another main problem was the difficulty of the activities. It may seem
adequate to make students start with an activity that just deals with the names of jobs (see
activity one, appendix II), and then continue with a more complicated one in which the
students have to relate these names with a description of the work done in every job
(activities two and three in appendix II). However, since these students have a very low level
of English because they have never done an effort to study for their exams, they have a lot
of trouble to understand these descriptions by themselves unless they use a dictionary.
Because the students were using the computers, the teacher allowed them to use the
Google translator, which is a dictionary that lets the users write a whole sentence at a time,
even though it does not translate very accurately most of the times. Students did not have
the patience to look up word by word in a proper dictionary, so they used the Google
translator all the time and asked the teacher to help them understand the inaccurate
translations in order to complete the activities. The whole thing became very repetitive and
boring, for the teacher too – and even for me, since I was actively helping students because
one teacher was not enough to help ten students individually –, so students opted for
completing the activities randomly many of the times. It could be though that, even though
students did not understand every word, they were receiving a lot of written English input.
However, this input was never significant for them, among other reasons because the goal of
the task was just to write all the scores got in the activities in the piece of paper, so they
never got to recapitulate or revise that input, which was probably easily forgotten.
The R1 session, even though it seemed to allow students to participate more dynamically
and in a more significant way for them, it had its disadvantages for applying it to the R3
group in the same way. The teacher had to do an effort to lead and supervise the
conversation drawn from the American Jobs website, but it worked because jobs and
professions is an interesting topic and many students were paying attention and taking part
in it. These significant communicative situations are perfect in order to get the attention and
motivation of students, since students like being active in an environment in which they feel
comfortable. Therefore, it would be advisable to encourage these situations with the
students of R3 as well. Still, in the R1 session, there were many other students who were just
listening patiently because they could not completely follow the class or were embarrassed
in front of other students that they thought were better at English than themselves. Of
course, it was difficult for the teacher to try to avoid that and help thirty students participate
at the same time, and at the same level. There was no while-task during the presentation of
the website, such as taking notes about some jobs or other information that the teacher
could have specified and which could have been useful for the students to understand better
the new knowledge that was processed. Such notes could have been used for the students
to write a short text or summery for homework that helped them recapitulate and reflect
15
about what they had been doing in class. On the other hand, it was good that students could
concentrate on their speaking, but the other students that did not actively participate were
totally passive, which makes the task not as effective as it could be.
To create communicative situations is a group as the one described in this paper is a difficult
task, because these students have been used to understand the English language as a
subject that is difficult and dull to learn, probably from primary school. Also, some of them
have bad attitude habits and ways to boycott the classroom when they get bored, by
creating ‘accidental situations’ in which they pretend to have a problem that the teacher
needs to solve, just to break the English classroom routine. Therefore, I would suggest that
the teacher organized the session in terms of time, including some moments that were
repeated and turned into routines in every session – such as a moment of recapitulation at
the beginning of the class, or a moment of reflection at the end of it –, and also in terms of
space, so every task had its own space and the session was more dynamic. When organizing
the class in terms of time, it is important that oral and written activities, along with listening,
video or computer tasks, are alternated, so that students see that the class is functional and
interactive and they can feel stimulated and willing to participate.
� Description of an alternative session for R3:
Taking all this into account, the 4th
of April session suggested for R3 in this paper would take
the steps explained as it follows. The class would begin with a presentation of the topic to
make it interesting and catch the attention of the students. Therefore, instead of starting
telling the students what activities have to be done during that session, the teacher would
first ask interesting and disturbing questions or give new recent information about the job
situation in Spain and how it could affect the students in the future. Then, she would
encourage the students to talk about the topic and explain what they already know and how
they think the topic is attractive. This kind of class discussion helps students develop critical-
thinking skills (e.g., determining cause and effect relationships, hypothesizing, drawing
conclusions, etc.), and their English communication skills in an authentic situation. It could
be interesting for the student’s motivation that the teacher also mentioned the idea that the
school is the tool of the student’s personal development and their future work in the society,
since many students at this age do not seem to realize this fact. Of course, all this should be
done using both languages, English and Catalan, so everybody could follow the class.
The teacher could draw the topic to particular job or profession cases, so the new
vocabulary came up in the conversation. The same Bureau of Labor Statistics website from
the United States department of labour used in the R1 session or a similar one such as the
16
British one shown in appendix III, which may have easier words for the students, could be
used here as a visual support, but without going in depth with it too much. However, it could
be asked to write down some information during the oral conversation, such as the main
types of jobs named in the website used in class. In the case of using the British website just
suggested, they could do six columns starting with ‘creator’, ‘do-er’, ‘helper’, ‘organiser’,
‘persuader’ and ‘thinker’. Then they could categorise every new job they encounter during
the session and finally have a vocabulary schema that will help them study the new words in
a more effective way.
The next task could be to work with the computers individually. It should not be to complete
a long list of random activities though, but just a couple that were significant for the
continuation of the session. They could be ones that just tackle the name of the jobs, such as
the number one in appendix II. Another example could be the one in appendix IV, which
relates the names of the jobs with the names of the job places. Because they just have to
look up only a word at a time, students should not have trouble with the online translator.
However, the teacher should encourage the use of a different online dictionary, such as the
wordreference.com, which is more reliable and comprehensive than the Google translator.
The teacher should give a limited amount of time to do this task, so students did not fall into
their old habit of delaying finishing the task. The goal would be that students had some jobs
organized in the columns created before, in order to continue with the session.
The next task suggested is called ‘Possible selves sharing activity’ (Fukada, Fukuda, Falout, &
Murphey, 2011). This task has two parts, one that is orally carried out by the whole class
sitting together, and the second is done in pairs. In the first part, every student is asked to
brainstorm their possible future careers imagining at the same time if there are any settings
or situations where they could use their English skills in those careers. A conversation
pattern could be given to the students to make the task easier (A: What would you like to be
in the future? / B: I would like to be a /an __________). Since the students will be
participating actively and hopefully being honest about their future expectations, which is a
personal and emotional issue, the new vocabulary gathered during the computer task will be
cognitively better consolidated. In the second part, students have to gather as many
‘possible selves’ as possible from their classmates, by getting in pairs as if it was an
interview, and writing down what these classmates would like to be in the future. The
teacher should encourage as many different pairs as possible, so students also interacted
with classmates they never talk to, so a friendlier work environment was promoted in the
classroom.
To enrich the ‘Possible selves sharing activity’ a bit more, the teacher could explain with
simple English the tasks involved in the jobs that came up during the brainstorming part. So,
if a student said ‘I would like to be a doctor’, the teacher should help the student to reach to
17
the conclusion that doctors ‘take care of patients’. Or if a student said he would like to be a
chef, the teacher could help him to find out that in English chefs ‘cook and prepare meals in
a restaurant’. This activity is about the level of the more complicated online ones that the R3
students did (number two and three appendix II), but in this case, because these sentences
are used in a more specific situation, they become more significant input for the students.
Finally, in order to consolidate all the new knowledge learned in this session, the homework
for the next day could be a short piece of writing to be handed in to the teacher, in which
the students explained what they and some of their classmates would like to do in the future
and what tasks are involved in those jobs. There are certainly many ways of presenting the
topic of jobs and professions to students of 2nd
of ESO, but this is a suggestion that tries to
include the content and skills practiced by the R1 group session without disregarding the
work that the teacher wanted her R3 students to do.
Session two – 11th/April
� Observations:
The R1 group had done the whole grammar page 72 of the student’s book for homework
(Appendix V), with the help of the theory in the book next to the activities and also some
explanations in Catalan of the ‘going to’ structure at the end of the book. The teacher had
expected that the students would be able to understand the grammar of the unit by
themselves, because she had already explained it during the previous session. However, the
students needed to ask once more what was the meaning of the words ‘going to’ and their
use. To make sure the students consolidated it, the teacher asked each one what they were
going to be in the future. This activity was effective to get the students attention because it
involved them in a personal and emotional way. Most of them wanted to say what they
would like to be in the future so they practiced the grammar structure in English in order to
be allowed to say it in front of the class.
Previously to the session, the teacher had told me she had wanted to start the second part
of the vocabulary of unit 6, which deals with ‘health’, but since she had not had time to
prepare it, she was going to do a listening from the book and leave the vocabulary for the
following session they had during the week. However, she asked the students to do page 76
from the student’s book by themselves for homework (appendix VI). This page included
words related to health problems issues (headache, temperature, broken arm, sore throat,
etc.), which supposedly the students had to look up at home in case they did not know them.
The R3 group had some words related to the ‘health problems’ topic to be translated for
homework. After checking they were correct, the teacher suggested watching a video with
more ‘health problems’ vocabulary the students could listen to and see written on the
18
screen at the same time (appendix VII). The problem she found with the video was that she
wanted students to be able to follow it but at the same she did not want it to be too
infantile. Therefore, I suggested using the video to do a dictation game in which the students
tried to write down the vocabulary while watching the video. This way, students would see
this activity as a game and they would be fully engaged with the vocabulary while watching
and listening to it. That would reinforce their skills to focus and take notes in class. Also, by
having the students busy writing what they understood, the task would not be so passive an
activity as it is normally to watch a video, and the new knowledge would become better
processed by the students. There was a bit of confusion among the students when the
teacher explained the task, maybe because it had been my idea and she was still not sure
about it herself. Since the objective of the task was not clear, the students got a bit
frustrated at the beginning, and thought the task to be more difficult than it was.
After the task, some students commented that the video had appeared a bit childish to
them. However, some others expressed the idea that it could have been, but that they knew
so little English that it was fine for them to watch it even if it was a bit infantile. This
discussion was interesting in order to see how little confidence with English students from
R3 had. The video included vocabulary such as ‘Band-Aid’, ‘bruise’, ‘bump’, ‘fever’, American
words instead of the more British ones that the group R1 had for homework in the student’s
book. Once every student had written every word of the video in their notebooks, the
following task was to turn on the computers and do a couple of online activities very similar
to the ones done in the previous session described in this paper (example in appendix VIII).
To finish these activities took the students until the end of the session. As can be seen in the
excerpt of one of them in appendix VII, one of the activities uses the word ‘temperature’
instead of ‘fever’, which was a bit confusing for the students, who had to deal with two
different ways of naming something new for them. At a particular moment, the teacher
explained the meaning of the word ‘constipated’, which all the students thought to be to
have a cold. This kind of peculiar explanations about words shows that students can actually
be interested in the English language if the topic is new for them and is presented in an
attractive way.
� Didactic suggestions:
The fact that the teacher has to repeat the explanation of some simple grammar concepts in
the R1 classroom proves that students from R3 are actually as intelligent as those in R1, and
that the R1 students keep forgetting the concepts just like the students of R3 do. The
difference resides in that the students from R3 never get to study seriously before the exam
because of a lack of motivation to pass, especially knowing that they do not need to pass the
exams if the subject is assessed in terms of attitude and class work. As can be seen in the
19
oral activity with the R1 group in which they have to say what they would like to be in the
future, the teacher is putting in practice a similar activity to the one that is suggested with
R3 in the previous session described in this paper. What it is not understandable is that the
teacher does not do it with the R3 group, as I suggested doing in the alternative session for
R3, since for them it could have the same benefits it had for the students of the R1 group.
Another strategy that the teacher uses a lot with the R1 group is to ask the students lots of
homework that take a long time to be corrected in class, as it is the whole grammar page
they correct at the beginning of the session and which takes almost half of the class, and the
vocabulary page about ‘health’ that the students are asked to do for the next session. This
may work with the R1 students, because they are used to it and they know they are
penalized if they do not bring them all. However, too much homework is not always
advisable if the students are likely to need the help of the teacher, as it could happen with
grammar activities (Perrenoud, 2006). In any case, it cannot possibly work with the R3 group,
since these students are not motivated to do a lot of work by themselves and need the
teacher to guide them. That is another reason to believe that a variety of tasks should be
alternated during the session so the students feel stimulated and feel they are doing a lot of
work without needing to finish it at home.
My suggestion to vary this session so that it is not as monotonous for the students as the
one of the 4th
of April given to the teacher before starting the session, resided in the idea of
having a while-task during the video. This suggestion of lengthening the task of watching a
video that the teacher only expected to be introductory, by turning it into a dictation game,
appeared to be effective for the students to remember the new vocabulary longer, at least
until the end of the session. It also compensated the distribution of time during the two
tasks, the one of the video and the one on the computer, making the one of the video more
productive, and the computer one shorter and less monotonous. Still, these two tasks could
have been improved in order to be more effective and could have included issues done in
the R1 group session, as I suggest in the next section. One of these issues is the practice of
grammar, which as can be seen, is given a lot of importance in the R1 session, but is not
mentioned at all in the R3 one. The teacher told me that the students had worked with the
‘going to’ concept in other sessions I had not been able to attend, so it is not that the R3
groups do not tackle grammar issues at all. Apparently, the teacher likes to have sessions
with R3 devoted only to vocabulary, maybe because of the easiness of just focusing on one
particular issue. It is not bad to focus a lot on the vocabulary, since there are Second
Language Acquisition studies that prove that a good base of vocabulary helps students to be
more fluent in their second language (Hilton, 2008) and also improves their pronunciation
intelligibility (Bundgaard-Nielsen, Best, Kroos & Tyler, 2012), rather than a good base of
grammar with poor vocabulary knowledge. Still, it would only be beneficial for the students
20
if they had the possibility of remembering the new learned grammar concepts in every
session even if it is briefly, so they are recapitulated and better processed in their long-term
memory.
� Description of an alternative session for R3:
As I explained in the didactic suggestions section for the session of the 4th
of April, I propose
to instil some routines for all the sessions. One of them could be done at the beginning of
the class, in which the teacher, instead of explaining the main task of the day first thing, she
could start an stimulating conversation about an interesting issue related to the topic of the
day. So, in the same way that in the previous session I suggested talking about the work
situation in Spain and how it affected to the students, in this one I suggest bringing the topic
of health to the students in a way that can catch their attention. Another thing that would
be advisable doing first of all would be to decide what vocabulary we really want the
students to learn. If the video we want to play to the students includes American words such
as ‘band-aid’, ‘bruise’, ‘bump’ or ‘fever’, then the teacher should make sure that she uses
them when giving examples and that they appear in the rest of activities, since the repetition
of a consistent vocabulary in the input throughout the same session increases the chances of
being processed in the long-term memory of the students. Therefore, if the video is used in
the session, examples of the pre-task opening questions that the teacher makes to activate
the student’s schemata could be: “have you recently been ill?”,“what do you do at home
when you have a fever?”, “when you have a cut on your finger, do you use a band-aid?”, etc.
After the conversation with the students, in which the topic is then clear for them, and the
new vocabulary has been commented on orally, then the video task is explained in a way the
students find it easy to understand. The teacher tells the students that some of the words
they have been talking about will appear in the video, and that what they have to do is to try
to write down as many as they can on their notebooks so at the end of it they can say who
has caught more. The fact that the new vocabulary has appeared at the beginning of the
session should make it easier for the students to catch the words, and shorter, so there is
more time for other activities during the session. Also, the fact that the goal of the task was
explicitly described, instead of just saying that they were going to watch a video, probably
makes the students less doubtful about the age at which the video should be aimed.
Instead of continuing the session by going to the computers and working individually, the
teacher could encourage them to work in groups – since the students attending the class are
always around 8 or 9, never more than 10, the groups could be made of four or five
students. This way, the students that normally have trouble working alone and get more
distracted, will feel the help of their classmates and be more satisfied with their own
21
contributions. Therefore, I would propose that the teacher prepared her own activity, had it
printed so they did not need the computer, and gave a pocket dictionary to each group if
needed. The activity suggested could be the “pencil in the middle” Llapis al mig (Pujolàs,
2008), in which every group has a piece of paper and every member has to write the answer
to one question or problem appearing in this paper. Before writing it, the student has to
read the problem aloud and make sure that his/her classmates help with contributions, until
the whole group reaches a consensus about the answer. An example of an activity with
sentences to be completed can be found in appendix IX.
The activity would be comprehensive if the teacher asked the students to remember the
meaning of ‘going to’ and asked them to use it every time they answered a part of theirs on
the piece of paper by saying first “I’m going to answer_____”. This way, the students would
be practising their grammar and vocabulary at the same time, and using their English in a
realistic situation, that is to say, with an obvious objective. To finish this session I would
suggest getting the students’ chairs in the shape of half a circle so they all could see the
teacher in the middle, and have a last class conversation of not more than five minutes –
using both Catalan and English – in which all the class activities could be recapitulated and
reflected about. Some questions that could be asked are “what did we do?”, “how did we do
it?”, “how did you feel?”, “if I did that activity again, what would you change?” etc. This
reflection at the end of every session could be very beneficial for the students to be more
aware of their work carried out in class and their own useful participation, and consequently,
to increase then their self-confidence. Therefore, I would propose this final activity as
another routine the students could get used to do after every session.
Session three – 18th/April
� Observations:
The R1 group session started once more with the teacher checking that everybody had done
the homework. This time was exceptional because, apart from asking the usual homework,
which was to correct the page 77 of the student’s book, the second grammar part of the unit
dealing with the modal ‘should’ (similar to appendix V), the teacher had also given some
optional homework. This voluntary homework was a photocopy with vocabulary activities to
do with jobs on one side, and with sickness and health vocabulary on the other (appendix X).
The students that completed the homework, who were the majority, got an extra point for
the next evaluation. After checking the homework, they started correcting page 77, and
surprisingly, one or two students asked once more the meaning of ‘going to’. The teacher
explained that again, and afterwards, the use of ‘should’ so it became clear for the whole
class. Then, the photocopy was corrected too. The main task of the session appeared to be
to keep doing activities from the book in order to revise for the exam. The teacher asked to
22
do page 117 from the workbook, which was to complete repetitive grammar activities
dealing with ‘going to’ and ‘should’, and make questions if the students had any doubts. For
those who finished before the end of the class, the teacher asked them to already start
vocabulary activities from unit 7 from the student’s book.
For the R3 group session, the teacher thought it would be enough if the students were able
to complete the same photocopy that the R1 group had as optional homework (appendix X).
However, the students found themselves again involved in a long and boring task translating
lists of words from the photocopy with the computers. Therefore, most of them just
completed the side of sickness and health, going very slowly, and wasting a lot of time by
talking to other classmates instead of working individually.
� Didactic suggestions:
The R1 session was spent completing and correcting many activities from the book, whereas
the R3 was spent trying to complete just one activity that for the students seemed incredibly
long. The R1 students are used to having to deal with a lot of mechanical activities, which
they know are similar to the ones that will appear in the exam. On the other hand, the R3
students find having to do many mechanical activities by themselves very disheartening.
They do not have the incentive the R1 students have, that if they know how to complete the
activities they will pass the exam and therefore the subject. Still, the methods used to teach
English to the R1 group are not always effective, because by passing these exams, the
students may be learning English grammar and vocabulary, but not acquiring it and
practising it in a real way. However, the teacher feels obliged to evaluate the students with
these written exams decided by the English department of the centre and, therefore, to
make the students practice with mechanical fill-in activities.
As the DECRET 143/2007 set by the Catalan Government’s Education Department establishes,
all the basic competences should be developed in every subject, including the
communication skills, especially in the case of the second language subject. Taking into
account that the English subject is given only three hours a week, actually a very short
amount of time to learn a second language, it would be advisable to set different kinds of
activities in one session, as I already suggested for the previous class. Every session should
include at least one activity that tackled the practice of the speaking and listening skills and
maybe a short one that tackled the practice of writing skills, even if they are not the main
task of the session in question. Teachers should not forget that to get their students to
acquire the English language in order to be able to communicate with other people is the
main goal when teaching this subject.
23
In any case, the teacher is not in the least forced to prepare the R3 students with lots of fill-
in grammar activities from the book to pass an specific exam, so I would suggest that the
teacher took the advantage of this and planned the session with more real English situations
in which the students could use the language in a more practical way. As a rule, I think it
would be beneficial for the students to reduce the amounts of vocabulary appearing in the
activities, so they had time to process the new knowledge in class, and then they could put it
into practice in pairs or small groups, or even the whole class sitting all together in the shape
of half a circle, as I have suggested previously in this paper. This is more than advisable in
this particular session, since the R3 students were not able to finish both sides of the
photocopy they were asked to complete due to the long lists of words they included and
which the students found dull to translate. It is true that some words had already appeared
in the two previous sessions described in this paper, such as ‘broken arm’ or ‘cut finger’, but
the teacher did not establish a relation between what the students had learned in the
previous session and what they were going to learn in this one. The students were only
asked to sit in front of the computers and complete the activities, the goals of which they did
not quite understand until they had translated most of the words.
It is a probable cause of school failure to expect that the students do all the logical
connections between what they learned, what they are learning and what they will learn,
even if for the teacher they seem evident. That is why it is important that the teacher always
makes these connections, and also that helps the students learn to use the language as an
instrument to understand the class experiences in a joint and coherent way. Another
problem with the materials provided by the teacher, as I mention for a second time in this
paper, is that some of the vocabulary appearing in the photocopy were things that the
students had learned in the previous session but named with a different word, such as
‘temperature’ instead of ‘fever’, or ‘sticking plaster’ instead of ‘band-aid’. I would suggest
two possibilities, either the teacher made an explicit connection between the words learned
in the previous session with the ones they have to learn in this one, or that she modified the
photocopy so the students saw they already knew some of the words of the activity and felt
motivated to learn the ones that they did not yet. In the next description of an alternative
session I opt for the former option (appendix XI).
24
� Description of an alternative session for R3:
Since the R3 students had already done some vocabulary dealing with ‘Health and illnesses’,
the first routine of the session to activate the schemata could be centred on asking the
students what they remember from the previous session in which they tackled such
vocabulary. The teacher could also ask questions such as “what is that thing you put on your
finger if you have a cut?”, or “what do you use to know your temperature?” This way, the
teacher is recapitulating the previous vocabulary while introducing the new one: “Who
knows what ‘temperature’ is?”, “What would you take if you have a high fever?” etc. After
this introduction to the session, the photocopy they are supposed to complete should look
easier for the students. Still, to make the task seem less dull for the students, it could be
carried out by cooperative work so, as I mentioned in the previous session, the students feel
more confident with the activities by sharing the work with their classmates than just facing
it alone. In this case I would suggest using the activity called “the number” El número
(Pujolàs, 2008), in which the class is divided into small groups, but every student has a
number of their own. So, when the activity is finished, the teacher takes a number written in
a piece of paper from a bag at random and the student who has that number has to give the
solution to the rest of the class. This way, it is made sure that every student has worked as
much as the others because nobody knows who will have to explain it to the class until the
time given to do the activity is over.
To adapt this pedagogic strategy to our task, we could divide the class into two groups, and
ask one of them to complete the first activity of the photocopy – the one in which the
symptoms and the remedies need to be related – and ask the other group to do the second
activity – the one in which the sentences have to be completed with a verb (appendix X).
This way, the activity becomes less dull and can be completed in less time. However, so all
the work is not done by the same student of a group, as it could happen, the students need
to know that after this activity, one person of one group will go with a person from the other
so they can put in common the answers of both activities and be able to deal with the next
task.
From the moment in which the students get in pairs after completing the activities of the
photocopy, they all get an individual number and start the next task, which is to create
sentences combining the answers of the first previous activity with the sentences of the
second one. Then, if one student has the answer “cut finger – band-aid” and the other
student has “put on a band-aid”, they can form the sentence “If you have a cut finger, you
should put on a band-aid” and write it down on their notebooks. When the teacher explains
the task, also explains the meaning of the modal “should”, which at this particular moment
of the session should not be difficult to add to the task. This is so because, at this moment,
25
the students are confident with the vocabulary, so to understand some new grammar is a
manageable challenge. It is always advisable to create zones of proximal development like
this, because it makes it easier for the students to build their learning process. By including
the modal “should” in the task, the R3 students are including the practice of grammar
concepts that the R1 students worked with in this session.
After the teacher has let the pairs of students some time to write as many sentences as
possible, then she can start saying numbers randomly and one student after the other can
read aloud one of the sentences they have written. Still, the goal of this task remains a bit
poor in terms of being significant for the students and a bit mechanical, far from the idea of
creating real communicative situations. Therefore, the idea would be that the students could
practice these sentences they have written in pairs in a realistic situation. The second side of
the photocopy dealing with jobs is too difficult to ask the students to do it in what is left of
time in this hypothetical session I am suggesting, especially if it is without a good scaffolding
preparation as it has just been done with the topic of ‘health and illnesses’. However, what
the students already know about the ‘jobs and professions’ topic could be refreshed and
used to create this realistic context we need. This could be a great example for the students
to see that everything they learn in the English classroom is relevant and can be useful at any
time. Therefore, the teacher would check that students remember previous knowledge
about the topic by asking questions such as “What is the name of the person that cures
illnesses?”, “Do you think you are going to be a doctor?”, “What about being a nurse?”, etc.
Then, she would explain the task to the students, which is to create a mini-dialogue in pairs
including the sentence they have prepared before, and represent it in front of the class. For
example – A: Good morning doctor/B: Good morning Andrea, what’s wrong? /A: I have a
high fever/B: Well, if you have a high fever, you should drink cold water. /A: I tried that/B:
Then, you should take an aspirin.
We could also tell the students the objectives of this task and explain why it can be useful to
have this knowledge and be able to use it one day in a real situation. We could say that now,
if they are ever ill in a foreign country, they can go to the doctor’s and say what’s wrong with
them in English. To make evident these relations between what is learned at school and how
this knowledge could be used in real life can only be positive for the stimulation of the wish
for more knowledge (Perrenoud, 1999). Finally, I would include the routine to recapitulate
and reflect about the session I had already suggested for the end of the previous session.
That every session ends with an opportunity for the students to give their opinion about the
just received class is a wonderful way for the teacher to evaluate what worked and what
could be improved. For the students, it means to be able to feel they also have a voice in
their education, something that can positively contribute to their self-confidence and
motivation for the subject.
26
Exam Unit 6
During the other sessions between the 18th
and 25th
of April that I could not attend, the
students from both groups R1 and R3 took an exam to be assessed from unit 6. Having a look
at the two different exams, it can be seen the modifications that the R1 exam undergoes in
order to fulfil the expectations the teacher has of the R3 students (appendices XII and XIII).
Both exams follow the same structure with a vocabulary, a grammar and a reading section.
There is no listening or speaking task, which means that they are incomplete in terms of
assessing all the communication skills needed to acquire a second language. The activities in
the R3 exam are simplified even though they attempt to assess the same vocabulary and
grammar concepts, including words related to the ‘jobs’ and ‘illnesses’ topics, the future
tense with ‘going to’ and the modal verbs ‘should’ and ‘must’, the latter modal having been
studied in sessions I did not attend.
Most of the grammar activities in the R3 exam are multiple-choice, which apparently makes
the activities easier for the students to understand. However, the multiple-choice system
can be answered completely randomly, which makes the activities fail as a reliable
assessment of the real grammar level of the students. The text from the R3 reading section is
the same as the one appearing in the R1 exam, but shorter. The R3 group did not practice
their reading skills during the unit 6 sessions so, even though the text is simplified, the
students had difficulty dealing with it in an exam situation. Therefore, this exam’s construct
lacks validity for both groups: it does not assess listening and speaking skills, even if the R1
group practices them during the sessions; and it assesses reading skills, even if the R3 group
never practices them during the sessions.
� Didactic suggestions for the R3 exam:
Knowing that the exam is not the most important grade in order to pass the subject in the
case of the R3 students, the teacher should be more creative and include more real English
when designing it. Also, provided that the students could practice their listening and writing
skills during the unit 6 sessions, I would suggest including fewer mechanical grammar
activities and have different grammar concepts mixed in one activity so the students had
time to do a listening and a short writing as well. The teacher should avoid creating an
atmosphere of anxiety by explaining to the students that this test is just an evaluation to
check the progress they are doing with their English. In fact, the teacher should involve the
students in a global discussion of what kind of activities should appear in the unit test in
order to make the students more interested in their own evaluation. She could remind them
of all the different tasks they have been doing during the unit and explain that it is fair that
27
similar activities appear in the exam for the teacher to know if they have improved from the
last time they started working on such activities. It could also be a good idea to devote one
previous session to the exam to talk about the kind of activities that the teacher is planning
to include, and discuss with the students which ones they find more difficult, in order to
repeat them in class if possible before the actual day of the test. Therefore, the students
would feel more comfortable with the examination and more motivated to fulfil the
expectations the teacher has made explicit and attainable for them.
Session four – 25th/April
� Observations:
In the R1 session, the teacher wanted to introduce the first grammar part of unit 7, the
future tense using the auxiliary ‘will’, but this time she wanted to tackle the grammar in a
different way than just following the book. She gave the students a photocopy that
explained how to read the future of a person by having a look at the main lines of their hand
(appendix XIV). It included a guidance to do a prediction of someone, and a prediction of
someone’s partner. The students easily understood the use of ‘will’ and ‘won’t’ and it did
not take a long time for them to be able to orally practice the predictions. The teacher also
had the idea of making the students prepare a dialogue in groups that could be performed
for the rest of the class. During the rest of the session, the students got into groups and
started to prepare it so they could do the performance the next Monday. They thought of
bringing clothes to dress up and decided it could be a wonderful opportunity to be recorded
with a video camera. The majority of the students got motivated with the task, since it
involved a change of routine from just working with the book to fulfilling an exciting project
in which they could take decisions and use English in an authentic way. For homework the
students were given a photocopy with a cartoon that showed a story of a man and a fortune-
teller with no dialogues. The students were expected to write a short text explaining what
they thought was happening in the cartoon.
To start the session with R3, the teacher presented a very illustrative Power Point that
introduced vocabulary and expressions having to do with the different stages of life, such as
‘grow up’, ‘move home’, ‘start school’, ‘leave school’, ‘get a job’, ‘get married’, ‘have
children’ and ‘die’. She explained the meaning and use of every expression appearing in the
slides, adding some examples in which the students were the protagonists. Therefore, in the
case of ‘be born’, the teacher would ask the students to write the expression down in the
notebooks, along with the definition and an example with the name of one of the students:
‘Andrea was born in 1998’. Then, the teacher explained the use of ‘will’ and ‘won’t’ and the
difference with ‘going to’ in order to express the future tense. She explained the form on the
28
blackboard and put examples such as ‘Andrea will come to my house’ or ‘Roberto won’t
come to my house’.
After the explanations, the teacher gave a piece of paper to every student and explained
how to origami it in order to create a paku paku (appendix XV) which is kind of a flower
paper that depending on how it is opened – depending on what colour and number a
partner says – it opens and gives you some information or another you have written inside.
The idea was that students wrote some expressions learned in the Power Point and
practiced the future tense with ‘will’ acting as if they were fortune-tellers to their
classmates. They were not very creative when writing their own future predictions, so they
wrote very similar sentences to those given by the teacher at the beginning of the session. In
order to practice the oral activity, one example could have been that a student asked to
another ‘choose a colour and a number’, the other said ‘red and two’, and the other read
from the paku paku ‘you will die in 2040’. However, students ran out of time when preparing
the origami, so they did not have time to practice the oral part.
� Didactic suggestions:
What the R1 students were preparing in this session could be considered a short English
project (involving two or three sessions), which has the advantages of motivating the
students into completing a particular objective and be creative in the process. The students
feel they have a responsibility organizing their own parts of the play, they are developing
communication skills, and they are learning to work in groups. Setting a project is a
wonderful way to motivate the students and develop their skills to learn by themselves.
Also, it should not be forgotten that the experiences that are lived emotionally more
intensely are better recalled, so hopefully, the new grammar and vocabulary they learn
during the project will be remembered in a longer term. It is very probable that the R3
students need more help from the teacher to progress in a project, but still, it is a learning
strategy that should be used with them as well, so they eventually develop abilities they
sometimes lack, such as work autonomy or decision-making.
The Power Point used at the beginning of the R3 session was a very good introduction to the
session, in order to illustrate the new vocabulary to be worked with. In fact, it could have
been good visual support if the teacher would have started with the opening routine I have
been suggesting in the previous sessions, the conversational strategy to catch the students’
attention and to start connecting their previous knowledge to the new one to be learned in
this session. However, when the teacher gives all the examples of sentences made from the
expressions directly to the students, she is disregarding the possibility of asking the students
to try to construct them by themselves, and therefore, the chance of going through a
29
cognitive process that makes the students better understand the new knowledge. The
teacher should think their students capable of doing such a task, since they already have a
starting, some tools and strategies already given and some previous knowledge, which
makes it possible that the student makes the learning process of new knowledge. In this
case, the students have the tools because the teacher has shown them the new terms and
vocabulary they need to create the sentences. They could also have had some previous
knowledge if they had been working with the modal ‘should’, as I suggest doing in the
previous session. This is so, because the construction of ‘should + infinitive’ is like the
construction of ‘will + infinitive’. Telling this to the students and guiding them on the
blackboard by using some activation strategies such as asking them to try to finish
incomplete sentences, so they have a starting point to construct with the language, is a
better stimulus to activate their learning process than just telling the students to copy some
examples and expect they completely understand them and are able to repeat them.
As for the task with the origami construction and the oral activity to tell the future to a
classmate, as good as it is for the students to be creative and practice their communication
skills, there is no reason not to be enriched as a project with the students being recorded as
the final objective, just as it is done with the R1 group. The whole task will be more
interesting and fun for the students if they know that after writing their sentences and
practising, they will be able to perform them as in a play, dressing up and being recorded. Of
course, from my own experience trying to prepare similar activities during my Practicum II, I
know that there are students who like to be recorded, and others that do not. Therefore, it
should be optional and the teacher should explain that no one but her will have the
recording, which will never end up in the Internet and will only be used to be played in class.
If the teacher had time to play the recordings in class and the students watched themselves
speaking in English, at the same time that they are congratulated by the teacher for doing a
good job, the students could gain a lot of self-confidence and motivation to keep improving
their English.
� Description of an alternative session for R3:
As I have explained in the previous section, the session could start with a conversational
opening routine with the Power Point as support material, in order to catch their attention
and connect their previous knowledge to the new one. The next step could be the
construction of examples by the students with the help of the teacher on the blackboard,
also explained in the previous section. Once this is done and the students start feeling
comfortable with the future tense with ‘will’, the teacher would explain that they are going
to do a project that is going to last two sessions, the current one and the next one, the
objective of which is to perform a play in pairs written by themselves. The story has to
30
revolve around a situation in which a fortune teller tells the future to someone, and it can
involve doing an origami paku paku, to read a palm – they could follow the photocopy used
by the R1 group if they liked (appendix XIV) – or any other way they can think of in order to
tell the future. It is advisable to give choices to the students so they feel they also participate
in the elaboration of their own work structure, something that makes them feel much more
responsible. This being the case, the teacher has to adopt a much more flexible attitude
towards the work of the students, and her task has to be to guide, help and, especially,
motivate the students during the project.
During the rest of the current session, the students should choose their partner and
elaborate the idea of their story. They should think if they could dress up with some clothes
they may have at home or bring some objects that can give an atmosphere to the play. Then,
they should write some dialogues with the help of the dictionary and the teacher when she
is asked or simply passes by their table to have a look at the progress of the work. Five
minutes before the end of the class, the routine of reflecting about the session should focus
about the progress of the project and for the students to comment if they are enjoying it.
Also, they could talk about their expectations of what they think their performance is going
to be like and how well they think they will do it.
The second session should start with the teacher recapitulating what they did during the
previous session and how this second one will progress. The students should devote the first
half of the session to practice their dialogues while the teacher goes table by table to see
they are correct and to ask the students if they have any difficulties. During the second half
of the session, every couple of students would perform their short play and would be
recorded if they liked. This is normally a moment of fun but also of tension for the students
who are performing, so the teacher should give them as much positive support as possible,
and should ask the rest of students to do the same. When the plays have been performed, it
is a moment to make a reflection about the whole project. The students could be asked how
they felt during the performance, if they liked the experience, what plays they liked most
from those performed by their other classmates, etc., always encouraging them to use the
English language, even if it is mixed with Catalan. The teacher should guide the conversation
so the students can compare their opinions at a time, and listen to their classmates when it
is not their turn.
31
Session five – 2nd/May
� Observations:
In this session, the R1 group started correcting a reading they had for homework (appendix
XVI). The text covered expressions having to do with stages of life, similar to the ones that
the R3 group did in the previous session described in this paper. However, this reading was
very interesting because it also compared the expected life stages of the UK, Spain, Japan,
the USA, Iceland and other countries, which meant that students were also studying content
related with multiculturalism. After the reading, students were asked to do a listening about
life ambitions, in which a girl and a boy explain what they expected in life and what they had
really achieved after fourteen years (appendix XVII). The teacher played the listening twice,
and in the second time, she stopped the track after every sentence to make sure the
meaning was understood. After clarifying expressions such as ‘I didn’t become a DJ’ or ‘my
dreams came true’, little by little the students got the information and were able to
complete the activities.
Then, the teacher thought of a different and motivating way to make students participate in
the revision of the form, meaning and use of the future tense used with ‘will’ in comparison
with ‘going to’. She said she would give an extra point to the student that would explain that
in a perfect way, but the first to try would be allowed by a raffle. The teacher would write a
number from one to ten and the first to say it would try. This peculiar way of asking students
to remember grammar seemed to be quite effective and, taking into account the attention
the teacher got, once the answers were achieved, the students probably learned better the
grammar than in a traditional and sometimes boring for them oral explanation on the
blackboard by the teacher. Finally, the students were asked to complete page 88 from the
student’s book for homework, which dealt with the future tense with ‘will’ in a similar way
to the page appearing in appendix V.
As for the R3 group, in this session they did the second part of vocabulary of unit 7, which
had to do with musical instruments. The teacher had skipped this part in the case of R1
because of its lack of difficulty and in order to have more time to make progress with the
grammar of the book and introduce the present perfect, something that the teacher did not
expected to do with R3. The work that the R3 group had to do was to translate – with the
online dictionary in the computer – and answer a series of questions in relation to music that
they were given in a photocopy (appendix XVIII). Even though music and musical instruments
could be an easy topic to work with in English, the sentences that the students had to deal
with were quite complicated ones. However, the problem with this activity was not probably
its difficulty, but that the list of questions was very long and dull, and the students got bored
32
and made the time to finish them longer than needed. Therefore, there was no more time in
this session to do more activities.
� Didactic suggestions:
In this session, the R1 group worked with the topic of ‘life stages’, the one with which the
teacher had started the previous session with R3. However, with the R1 group, the teacher
used activities from the book that dealt with multiculturalism. That perspective of the topic
could have been tackled as well with the R3 students, but it was not, even though it would
have been positive to develop cross-cultural and self awareness in a group in which there is
quite an ethnical diversity that sometimes may create conflict in class (Philips, 2001).
Another thing that the R3 students do not normally do is readings, writings or listening tasks.
They may have been watching videos, such as the one of the previous session, but they only
listened to individual words or expressions, and never to a real dialogue. The same was true
of the writings and the readings: the English teacher assumed that if the students learned to
write or read chunks of language, it was the same as writing or reading several sentences
forming a text in one go. If the students do not practice these skills in a gradual way and
always towards the goal of writing and reading more complex texts every time, it will be
understandable that when they find a text in an exam, they do not have strategies to face it.
The connections between how to deal with chunks of language in order to reach the real
objective, which is to deal with authentic texts (readings and listening situations they could
find in real life) are not always obvious to the students, so the teacher has to help them to
make the connections. For this reason, I suggest including a writing task on this 2nd
of May
session, a listening task on the 7th
of May session and a reading task on the 16th
of May
session, and then give ideas on how to deal with the practice of these different skills. As for
the long music questions that the R3 students had to do for this session, I would propose to
use them as an introductory task. Before the start of the class, I had suggested to the
teacher that these questions could have been used to do an interview activity, in which the
students asked each other as if they were journalists. She thought this to be a good idea, but
the list was too long, and for when the students got to translate all the questions, the class
hour had finished. That is why I would reduce the amount of questions so every student had
to deal with fewer of them, they could practice them orally, and there was also time to do
the writing task I want to propose.
33
� Description of an alternative session for R3:
The session could start with the opening routine in which the teacher encouraged the
students to comment on the first four music questions from the list (appendix XVIII). They
would then brainstorm on music genres and also talk about new technologies such as the
MP3 and other formats they knew. As for the other eight questions from the photocopy, so
it is not such a long list for the students to translate them, the teacher could use the strategy
of the Peer Tutoring (Torrego, Negro 2012). This is a cooperative work strategy in which one
student that has some knowledge can teach it as if he/she was the teacher to another
student that does not have that knowledge. It is very effective for the inclusive education
because it has very positive advantages for both students, not only for the one that is being
taught. It teaches the students some important values such as that we all learn from each
other, and that the teacher is not the only one who has the knowledge in the class, so the
students feel mature enough to help their classmates when needed and, also, let others help
her/him without feeling proud. A student can use vocabulary that is easier to understand by
another student, which becomes very positive for the latter in order to learn new
knowledge; on the other hand, the student that is helping, feels more responsible and
involved in the class, which increases his/her self-esteem.
To adapt the Peer Tutoring to this session, I would suggest that both students taught and
were taught. Therefore, I would put students into pairs and would ask each of them to
translate four of the eight remaining questions from the photocopy. After the time given by
the teacher to do so, both students would get together and one would explain the meaning
of his/her four sentences to the other student, and then vice versa. This would make the
task of working with the questions much more dynamic and interesting for the students, and
they would not be working alone, so they would practice their communication skills. Once
this was done, the teacher could change the pairs of students, so nobody worked with the
same person again, and could ask them to interview each other with the questions and write
the answers given by their classmates.
After that, the task could be to write a report that looked like a short text with the answers
of their classmates. The teacher could help them have a common start for the text, and then
the students could work individually, facing the difficulty of writing a text by themselves.
While they were working, the teacher could go table-by-table suggesting improvements to
their texts but in a way that rewarded the already progress of the task, and consequently,
motivated them to continue (Castellà, Comelles, Cros, Vilà 2007). If there was some time left
before the end of the class, the teacher should not hesitate to congratulate them for their
work and even make the suggestion of having the texts hung up in the class on a poster
board with a nice title saying ‘music in the English class’ or something similar the students
34
wanted to paint. To decorate the classroom with work that the students have done is a great
way to create a nice environment in which the students get motivated to make progress
every day.
Session six – 6th/May
� Observations:
Due to the education strike on the 9th
of May, I decided to go to the centre on the 7th
. The R3
group had the class at 9:00 o’clock and in this session they did not have access to computers.
The teacher started revising the form of the future tense with ‘will’ on the blackboard and
asked the students to copy the same in their notebooks. The main task of the session was to
watch an extract from the film ‘I, Robot’ and complete some activities. This task was already
prepared in an educational blog created to practice English grammar by watching films
(appendix XIX). The pre-task was to answer eight questions about the future in 2035, the
year in which the film is set. The students liked the activity and the fact that they were able
to participate, even if they found it hard to do it all in English. Then the teacher asked the
students to write an answer for question number two, in which they had to imagine their
city in the year 2035 and think what changes they thought it would undergo. Some of their
ideas were a bit negative sometimes due to the current crisis Spain is going through, but
some students were very clever, with comments such as that “Sabadell won’t have shops
because people will buy on the Internet”.
After the pre-task, the main activity prepared in the website made the students watch the
video and then change the sentences that were not true into the negative, as it can be seen
in appendix XIX. The teacher, to make sure that the students did the whole activity, asked
the students to copy all the sentences before watching the video. It took some time for the
students to do so, and some students complained about it because they thought they were
too many sentences. Then, they watched the video, but the scene was very difficult to follow
due to the fact that what they could hear was the narrator talking very fast and saying
information that was not relevant for the exercise. Then, the students realized that only by
watching the images they were able to answer the activity. Unfortunately, the teacher
realized that some students had not copied all the sentences, but still, she proceeded to
their correction. For homework, the teacher asked them to turn all the sentences of this
activity into the future tense with ‘will’ and write them in their notebooks.
The R1 group started correcting three grammar pages similar to others shown in other
appendices that they had for homework in order to revise the future tense with ‘will and
35
won’t’. Once that was finished, the teacher introduced the first conditional on the
blackboard using mostly the Catalan language. After some examples the teacher gave so the
students try to finish them, they started understanding its use and structure: “You _______ a
heart disease if you eat too much meat (will get)”, “If you _______ so much sugar in your
coffee, you won’t put on weight (don’t put)”, etc. After doing many more examples like
these taken from the Internet with the whole class, the teacher decides to put and end to
the session by asking the students to do the first page of activities dealing with the first
conditional of the unit 7 from the student’s book.
� Didactic suggestions:
For the session of the R3 group, the teacher had thought that the activity from the movie
segments website could be a good listening task, but in fact, it was not a task in which they
could develop such skills, since the activities could be completed only with the images of the
video. In the listening task carried out by the R1 students on the 2nd
of May session, there
was a gradual awareness of the language they could hear by playing the track several times
and stopping at different points of it. The teacher should choose some listening materials
more adapted to the level of English of the R3 students that could provide them with a
learning experience more similar to the one had by the R1 students. Still, the pre-task to the
video in which the students commented on the possible changes in society by the year 2035
was an interesting topic that engaged them very productively.
Nonetheless, when the students got to the moment in which they had to copy all the
sentences that had to be checked while watching the film, they lost time and interest.
Against what the teacher believed, copying all those sentences did not guarantee that the
students paid attention to their meaning, because they mechanically wrote them as fast as
possible, and such moment certainly stopped the flow of the class. The teacher could have
checked the meaning of every sentence on the blackboard with the help of the students
instead, before and in between the different times she played the video, to make sure every
student was aware of what was being asked in every sentence. I suggest using a listening
from the student’s book used by the R1 group instead of the video from the Internet the
teacher uses. It deals with the topic of musical instruments, which is ideal because it
continues with the topic from the previous session, and also, fits in the actual English level of
the R3 students (appendix XX).
36
� Description of an alternative session for R3:
The session could start with the teacher asking the students to recapitulate what they had
done in the class in which they talked about music – provided they had followed the
alternative session – and to remind her who had been interested in learning to play a
musical instrument (that was one of the questions that was worked in the class that day).
The teacher could describe a situation in which they decide to learn an instrument and go to
a shop in which they have to buy it in English. She could challenge the students to ask her
questions as if they wanted to buy an instrument from her, and when a student said
something right in English that could be used in such a situation, she could write it on the
blackboard for the other students to learn it as well. To connect this speaking activity with
the listening, she could tell the students that they were going to listen to a conversation in
which a child like them wants to buy a guitar. In order to motivate the students, she could
try to convince them that by analysing the recording they were to learn very useful language
to be able to shop in English. As I have mentioned before in this paper, to make the objective
of the task explicit to the students helps to awaken their interest to learn.
The teacher could ask the students just to listen with attention and try to remember any
words or chunks of language they could for the first time she played the recording. Then, she
could write these words on the blackboard and congratulate the student that heard them.
The second play could be done as the teacher did the R1 group, by stopping the recording
after every sentence so the students had time to process what they heard and could repeat
it. At this point, the teacher could give a photocopy with the transcription of the listening in
a photocopy and ask them to read it in pairs. It could be suggested that the students thought
of a different musical instrument instead of a guitar and they wrote their own dialogue in
which someone wanted to buy the instrument in question. This work could be done in pairs,
and once the teacher passed table-by-table helping the students and checking their
dialogues were right, the students could perform what they had written in front of the
classmates. The teacher could compliment those students that tried to be more creative
with their dialogues in order to motivate them and make them aware that she actually cared
about their work pieces. The session could finish with the discussion routine in which
students shared their experience with the listening and said if they had found it easy or
difficult, and the teacher could conclude with the idea that the more they practiced their
listening skills, the more they would find English an easy language to understand.
37
Session seven – 16th/May
� Observations:
The R1 session starts correcting a photocopy they had for homework about the Murphy’s
Law in which they completed sentences using the first conditional by describing a bad
consequence to an action (appendix XXI). Then they corrected some sentences of the same
style they had to write from scratch. On the side of the photocopy, they had to write ten
sentences from scratch about superstitions with the first conditional. Before the teacher
asked for volunteers to read their sentences, she asked several students if they believed in
superstitions, which lead to a productive class discussion about the topic. After that, they
corrected another grammar page they had to do at home with many fill-in activities also
dealing with the first conditional and similar to appendix V.
During the correction of all this homework, the students kept asking questions about the
first conditional because they had not processed its meaning and use, even after having
done lots of grammar fill-in activities. For this reason, the teacher decided to devote the rest
of the class asking more activities for the students to solve their doubts. However, the
students seemed a bit bored with so much mechanical activity, so many of them started
misbehaving by talking among themselves instead of working individually. The teacher felt
that she was losing the control of the class so she threatened the class by saying that if they
did not stay in silence she would put more pages from the book for homework apart from
the ones she was going to give.
The R3 session also started with the correction of a grammar page from their Interface
Basics book with fill-in and multiple-choice activities dealing with the first conditional
(appendix XXII). However, the teacher discovered that nobody had done the last two
activities, some because they did not know they had to do them, and others because they
had found them too difficult. Therefore, the teacher asked them to do them in class using
the Google translator if they liked. I was there to help the students to solve the activities and
noticed that most of the students had great trouble with activity number four. It was first
conditional questions divided into two and mixed up for the students to join them back. I
had to explain that to each student and sometimes several times because they did not
understand it the first time. Once a student had this grammar page finished, the teacher
asked them to continue until the end of the session with online activities such as the ones
appearing in appendix XXIII. Because these activities were difficult as well, I stayed in the
same situation as before and had to give lots of individual explanations about how to
complete them.
38
� Didactic suggestions:
Just as I explained in the session of the 18th
of May, the fact that the teacher has to
constantly repeat the use of the grammar concepts the R1 students learn, proves that this
kind of repetitive activities she asks the students to do are not effective. It also proves that if
the R3 students have the same problem, maybe in a more conspicuous way that the R1
students due to their lack of motivation to pass the exams, that does not mean that the R3
students are worse students that the ones belonging to the R1 group. It was understandable
that the R3 students had trouble with the activity number four (appendix XXII) because it
was confusing and the students had only started to work with the first conditional two
sessions ago for the first time. Instead of going table-by-table explaining the exercise, the
teacher could have dealt with the activity with the attention of the whole class, both
because it saved time for doing other activities and because it is more pedagogical to explain
problematic concepts with the contribution of the whole class, especially if they are only
eight students.
The topic of the Murphy’s Law or the one of the superstitions are perfect to teach the first
conditional because they help the students understand better the use of such grammar
concept. Also, they are more engaging topics for the students in which they can practice
their writing skills and their creativity by writing their own superstitions, to put an example.
Therefore, I do not think there is a reason not to use these topics with the R3 students as
well, and using the same photocopies as the ones used in the R1 group. However, as I
mentioned in the suggestions section of the 2nd
of May session, I would like to include a
reading activity in this class, so the students practiced all the different language skills during
the unit. A perfect topic for the reading could be the one of the superstitions, or others
related to vocabulary topics worked in previous units, such as the one of the life stages, the
one of ‘jobs and professions’ or even the one of ‘health and illnesses’.
I would include two related factors in order to design the task: the first one that the texts
offered to the students were significant readings, since it is proved that the brain only
activates its more complex areas when it receives messages that make sense to it (Gertrúdix,
2013); secondly, that the students could make choices in their reading task, because
otherwise, such a task will have fewer chances of getting the students involved and make
them find it significant (Perrenoud, 1999). Also, I would not expect students to understand
every single word of the texts they are given and, instead, I would focus on their experience
when facing a new reading in English. A good strategy to gradually make students
comfortable with such an experience could be to ask them to read in groups and negotiate
39
the meaning of the text with their classmates. Therefore, students could put their
knowledge of English in common and enjoy the task of reading together.
� Description of an alternative session for R3:
The session could start with the opening routine in which the teacher encouraged the
students to comment about superstitions. She could make questions such as if they believed
in superstitions and if they knew any popular ones. The idea could be to write some on the
blackboard by using the first conditional to construct the sentences and finally to draw the
attention of the students to the grammar structure in question. Then, the teacher could
explain the main-task of the day: to read a letter and answer it. The students should feel at
ease with what the teacher expects from them, so they did not feel anxious facing this new
task. In fact, reading a text and writing a letter is an open activity that contributes to the fair
treatment of diversity, because every student can go as far as they can. The teacher could
also explain that, so they were aware of the task’s flexibility and they learned in a relaxed
environment.
The students could get in groups of three or four and could choose one of the three texts
provided by the teacher. The examples of letters I provide in the appendix XXIV are adapted
to the previous knowledge of the students – provided that they have been following the
alternative sessions – and are about topics they have worked with before. The three texts
tackle the future tense with ‘will’, but the first one also revises the future tense with ‘going
to’ and the modal ‘should’, and the other two texts revise the first conditional. Every student
could write their name after the introductory ‘Dear’ at the beginning of the letter and read it
for themselves for at least two minutes. Then, with their group, they could comment on the
letter and draw conclusions about what they think every sentence means.
The teacher could be going table-by-table to give them hints about it. When the time set by
the teacher to do this activity finishes, she could encourage the students to explain their
letter to the rest of the class in turns. Then, she could tell the students that the person that
supposedly wrote that letter is expecting an answer and that they could write it. This writing
should be the proof that the students have understood their readings, and is the perfect
realistic situation to put their communicative skills in practice on the paper. The students
could have the rest of the session to write such letter and have the last five minutes to
comment on their experience dealing with it with the rest of the class. It would be advisable
that the teacher congratulated every student that has made an effort to do the task in order
to motivate them for the next time they do a similar reading-writing activity.
40
CONCLUSIONS
After comparing the description of each of the sessions I attended with their corresponding
didactic proposals designed to fulfil the objectives of this paper, it is by the personal decision
of a teacher to choose to use some of the strategies suggested to improve the learning
experience of their students. Such proposals may seem only moderately changed in respect
to the original sessions, because tasks such as working on a course book’s listening or
working with a vocabulary photocopy already provided by the teacher in the original
sessions are still recommended in this paper. However, I hope readers understand that the
main objective of this project was to adapt these strategies to the students that lack
concentration and academic motivation, such as the 2nd
of ESO R3 group, but without
decreasing the level of English that would be expected from an R1 group.
The alternative sessions suggested for the R3 group now promote the development of all the
communication skills that are important when learning a second language, which are
‘speaking, writing, reading and listening’. These skills may have been worked in the R1 group
but not with the R3 one, because they seemed unconceivable without some proper
adaptation and preparation that this paper is encouraging. Now there is a better connection
between the previous knowledge and the new content made explicit to the students every
day, so they can be more aware of their learning progress and can rectify the belief that
school is boring and useless. The repetitive task of translating words and sentences with the
Google translator is avoided and an alternation of a variety of tasks is suggested instead, in
order to stimulate the student’s participation in class. In short, the sessions for the R3 group
are now more dynamic, interesting and interactive for the students.
What is also relevant in this project’s suggestions is the role of the teacher as a motivator
and mediator of the students and their work with the English language in emotional terms.
As can be seen in the description of the original sessions, many times, teachers just explain
what has to be done at the beginning of the class and hardly ever justify why or specify the
objectives of the task. That way, students understand the English subject as an hour in which
they are forced to work because otherwise the teacher tells them off. Instead, the teacher
should have a closer relation with their students and show that she/he cares about how the
students feel in class, so they found the classroom as a place in which they have a voice and
a right to know what they are learning and for what. That is why in my suggestions I keep
encouraging the teacher to keep a dialogue with the students at least at the beginning and
at the end of the session, in which the teacher can motivate the students about the work to
be done in class, define its objectives and explain why it is useful and good for them. At the
41
same time, the teacher can ask about the students’ preferences and about how they feel
before and after dealing with the tasks, so they eventually find the classroom as a space in
which they can also participate. These strategies belong to the emotional education field,
which is a subject the teachers should learn about and know how to apply in class as much
as possible. Sometimes teachers do not take the time to put it into practice because they
consider that the three hours a week of English should be completely devoted to the
learning of such a language. What they do not understand is that, when the problem is the
lack motivation, students appreciate to know that the teacher really cares about them and
their education, and that very same thing is what encourages the students to fulfil their
teacher’s expectations and, therefore, improve their academic performance.
In general, there has been a real improvement of the teaching-learning process, especially
by the enrichment of the tasks and their change into activities that can make the English
language interesting and motivating for the students. As can be seen throughout the project,
the suggested sessions try to introduce gradual changes to the habits of the students, as it is
the case with the routines or the fact that they have to work in groups. The idea was to turn
the activities into ones that can actually provide the students with a challenge they can
accept and try, so eventually they feel confident enough to go a bit beyond. This way,
students get to feel the satisfaction of having consolidated new knowledge which they know
will be important for their future. Such small achievements, which for the teacher may seem
insignificant at the beginning, eventually, are the key for the students to make the decision
of improving their performance in their English learning process. The development of these
students finally takes us to the goal of the project, which is to give them an ESO certificate
having adapted their education in a way that is not in the least less demanding than that
given to the rest of students, and in which they can acquire all the contents and skills set by
the official curriculum.
However, the alternative sessions proposed in this project have the limitation of just being a
hypothetical development of the students’ learning progress during seven sessions. In real
life, every session needs to be adapted depending on the progress and feedback of the
previous sessions. Therefore, the activities suggested in this project can always be improved
and be better adapted to the students depending on their real progress through the
sessions. Moreover, a teacher’s didactic strategies are perfected with practice and
experience, so it is expected that the ones suggested in this project are just a starting point
and that teachers keep researching and putting in practice new ones that can complement
the present ones.
42
BIBLIOGRAPHY
- Bernaus, M. (1995) “El inglés en la Reforma: Motivación a través de <projects>”, La
Enseñanza de la lengua por Tareas. XVIII Seminario sobre Lenguas y Educación. M. Siguan
(Coord) Barcelona : ICE, Universitat de Barcelona : Horsori
- Besalú X., Tort J. (2009) Escuela y Sociedad multicultural. Propuestas para trabajar con
alumnado extranjero, Sevilla : MAD
- Bundgaard-Nielsen, R. L., Best, C. T., Kroos, M., & Tyler, M. D. (2012). “Second language
learners’ vocabulary expansion is associated with improved second language vowel
intelligibility.” Applied Psycholinguistics, 33.
- Castellà, J. M.; Comelles, S.; Cros, A.; Vilà, M. (2007) Entender(se) en clase. Las estrategias
comunicativas de los docentes bien valorados. Barcelona: Ed. Graó.
- De Jong, N., &Perfetti, C. A. (2011). “Fluency training in the ESL classroom: An
experimental study of fluency development and proceduralization” Language Learning, 61
- DECRET 143/2007, de 26 de juny, pel qual s’estableix l’ordenació dels ensenyaments de
l’educació secundaria obligatòria. Generalitat de Catalunya, Departament d’educació.
- Ferreiro, R. (2006) Estrategias didácticas del Aprendizaje Cooperativo. El constructivismo
social: Una nueva forma de enseñar y aprender. Sevilla: Trillas. Eduforma.
- Fukada, Y., Fukuda, T., Falout, J., & Murphey, T. (2011). “Increasing motivation with
possible selves”, In A.Stewart (Ed.), JALT2010 Conference Proceedings. Tokyo: JALT.
- Gallego, D., Gallego M. (2004) Educar inteligencia emocional en el aula. Madrid: PPC
- Gertrúdix, S. (2013) “Aprendizaje natural de la lectura”, Cuadernos de Pedagogía, nº 433
Abril 2013
- Gil de la Serna, M. y Escaño, J. M. (2008) Cinco Hilos Para Tirar de la Motivación y el
Esfuerzo. Barcelona : ICE, Universitat de Barcelona : Horsori
- Gil de la Serna, M. y Escaño, J. (2010) “Motivación y esfuerzo en la educación secundaria”,
Desarrollo, aprendizaje y enseñanza en la educación secundaria / coord. por César Coll
Barcelona: Graó.
43
- Hilton, H. (2008). “The link between vocabulary knowledge and spoken L2 fluency.”
Language Learning Journal, 36.
- Mercer, N. (2001). Palabras y mentes. Cómo usamos el lenguaje para pensar juntos.
Buenos Aires: Paidós.
- Miras, M. (1993) “Un punto de partida para el aprendizaje de nuevos contenidos: los
conocimientos previos.” El constructivismo en el aula. Barcelona: Graó
- Nogales Sancho, F. V. (2008) Cuando no puedas con ellos...: propuestas pedagógicas para
la mejora de la dinámica en el aula. Valencia. Diálogo-Tilde. D. L.
- Onrubia, J. (1993) “Enseñar: Crear zonas de desarrollo próximo e intervenir en ellas.”El
constructivismo en el aula. Barcelona: Graó.
- Onrubia, X.; Fillat, M.; Martínez, D.; Udina, M. (1995) Criteris psicopedagògics per
al’atenció a la diversitat. Departament d’Ensenyament. Barcelona.
- Perrenoud, P. (1999). Diez nuevas competencias para enseñar. Barcelona: Ed. Graó.
- Perrenoud, P. (2006) El oficio de alumno y el sentido del trabajo escolar. Madrid : Popular,
cop.
- Phillips, E. (2001) IC? “I See! Developing Learners' Intercultural Competence” LOTE CED
Communiqué: Issue 3, 2001
- PujolàsMaset P. (2008) “Cooperar per aprendre i aprendre a cooperar: el treball en
equips cooperatius com a recurs i com a contingut.” Suports: revista catalana d'educació
especial i atenció a la diversitat vol. 12, núm. 1, primavera de 2008
- Vilella, X. (2013) “Algunes Claus del Desenvolupament Competencial a l’Aula” Perspectiva
Escolar Num. 367 – Gener/Febrer 2013
- Thorne, K. (2008) Motivación y creatividad en clase. Barcelona :Graó.
- Torrego, J.C. y Negro, A. (coords.) (2012). Aprendizaje cooperativo en las aulas.
Fundamentos y recursos para su implantación. Madrid: Alianza Ed.
44
APPENDICES
Appendix I :
STRATEGIES IN THE PROJECT EXPECTED RESULTS
MO
TIV
AT
ION
To make the class topics seem new and
present them in an attractive way. (Escaño,
Gil de la Serna, 2008)
The students’ attention is attracted and they
get more interested in the learning of
English.
To make the students’ experience in the
English class intense and emotional.
(Gallego, Gallego, 2004)
The student’s new knowledge is better
consolidated.
To include significant communicative
situations in the sessions. (Besalú, Tort,
2009)
The student’s attention is attracted and they
are encouraged to participate and be active
in the English class.
To create moments in which the students
can feel their contributions are valuable.
(Thorne, 2008)
The level of the students’ self esteem
improves.
To encourage students to talk about
themselves and listen to others, and reflect
about the classes. (Fukada, Fukuda, Falout
& Murphey, 2011)
Students create new and more positive
expectations with their experience with the
study of English.
TE
AC
HIN
G-L
EA
RN
ING
To alternate different kinds of activities
during the sessions. (Besalú, Tort, 2009)
Students feel more stimulated and willing to
participate in class.
To organize the sessions in terms of time
and space. (Escaño, Gil de la Serna, 2008)
Sessions become more dynamic and
interesting.
To create class discussions and moments of
reflection. (Ferreiro, 2006)
Students feel they have a voice in the class,
and the teacher can improve the preparation
of future sessions.
To make the objectives of the sessions
clear to the students. (Bernaus, 1995)
Students get more motivated and can feel
creative and responsible about the tasks.
To give a realistic context to the tasks.
(Vilella, 2013)
The tasks are enriched in terms of
competences and skills to be developed, and
the students feel more challenged.
To create zones of proximal development
(Onrubia, 1993) and make the logical
connections between previous knowledge
and the new one explicit. (Mercer, 2001)
The new knowledge is better understood
and the students are able to build their own
learning process.
To encourage the students to discuss their
own assessment. (Onrubia, Fillat, Martínez
and Udina, 1998)
Students feel more motivated to prepare for
their evaluation.
To include cooperative work strategies to
deal with the class activities (Pujolàs, 2008/
Torrego, Negro, 2012)
Students get more focused on the tasks and
feel more confident when solving difficult
activities.
To teach learning strategies to the students
such as taking notes, repeating in a
productive way, or organizing new
knowledge (Ferreiros, 2006/Nogales,
Sancho, 2008/De Jong, Perfetti, 2011)
Students have tools to deal with the English
learning and feel more autonomous when
studying.
45
Appendix II:
http://bls.gov/k12/index.htm
46
Appendix III:
(From http://www.agendaweb.org/)
1. http://esl.fis.edu/vocab/q21/jobs_r.htm
2. http://clases-ingles.com/vocabulary/Professions.htm
3. http://www.web-esl.com/Reading2/readinglevel2a.htm
47
Appendix IV:
http://www.thewhocarestrust.org.uk/pages/what-job-would-suit-me.html
Appendix V:
http://www2.arnes.si/~oskplucija4/ces/workers.htm
48
Appendix VI:
49
Appendix VII:
50
Appendix VIII:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=pyfkcUbhbJs#at=38
Appendix IX:
http://www.tolearnenglish.com/exercises/exercise-english-2/exercise-english-7425.php
51
Appendix X:
TOM DOES NOT FEEL WELL
1. Today, Tom has a very hot face and feels cold. He______________________________
2. To know how hot Tom is he needs __________________________________________
3. There’s a lot of pollen in the park. Tom_______________________________________
4. Tom hit the door of the cupboard with his head. He_____________________________
5. Tom ate too many sweets. Now he__________________________________________
6. Tom fell from his bike. He__________________________________________________
7. Tom needs______________________________________________________________
52
Appendix XI:
53
54
Appendix XII:
Appendix XIII:
55
56
57
58
Appendix XIV:
59
60
61
Appendix XV:
Appendix XVI:
Appendix XVII:
62
Appendix XVIII:
63
Appendix XIX:
64
Appendix XX:
http://moviesegmentstoassessgrammargoals.blogspot.com.es/2009/04/i-robot-future-will.html
65
Appendix XXI:
66
Appendix XXII:
67
Appendix XXIII:
68
Appendix XXIV:
http://www.english-grammar-lessons.com/type0/exercise3.swf
http://www.englishgrammarsecrets.com/type0/exercise2.swf
69
Appendix XXV:
1. “My future plans and expectations”
Dear______________,
How are you? Are you very busy with your exams?I am recently thinking a lot about my future
because I am finishing my Secondary School. The number one question in my head is what profession
should I choose? I want a profession that will satisfy me, challenge me, and make me happy. I think
that a job should be like a hobby. I want to love my work.
First of all, when I finish Secondary School, I will take the first important exam of my life - the final
graduation exam. I will be tested in four different subjects: the English and Catalan languages,
biology, and maths. When I finish, I will study at the Medical University to become a doctor.
But now, I am focusing my attention on finishing my studies. Also, before I have a family, I am
going to travel overseas. I want to see countries like Japan, Finland and travel through the African
continent. After I finish my education and travels, I will get married and have a family. I will live with
my future family in a quiet, natural countryside setting.
What about you? Do you often think about your future? Do you have any plans yet?
Yours,
Sarah
2. British Superstitions
Dear______________,
How are you? And what about your cat Fluffy? You know that I visit my grandmother every Sunday
and we talk about interesting things. The other day we talked about superstitions and we had a good
time. I made a list of the more interesting British superstitions and you can read them. But remember
that people only believe these if they are superstitious:
• If a black cat walks in front of you, you’ll have bad luck
• If you break a mirror, you’ll have seven years of bad luck.
• If you carry a four-leaf clover it’ll bring you good luck
• If you want a good thing to continue, you should touch wood
• If you rub a rabbit’s foot, it will bring you good luck!
• If you walk under a ladder, you will have bad luck!
• You will have bad luck if you open an umbrella indoors.
What do you think about these superstitions? Do you think they are true? I don’t think you believe the
first one, because Fluffy is Black and you don’ have bad luck!
Best Wishes,
John
70
3. Health and body care
Dear _______________,
Keeping fit and leading a healthy life is very important these days. For that reason we want to invite
you to P-sport, the gym with the best facilities you will find! Join us and, if you follow these simple tips
and stay active you will be healthy:
1. If you drink between six to eight glasses of water every day, you will have more energy and
you will remove waste from the body.
2. Hygiene is very important for a healthy life. You will prevent illnesses if you wash your hands
before and after eating, after blowing your nose or coughing or sneezing.
3. If you start your day with a good breakfast, you will feel more alert, more creative and more
energetic, and your whole day will go better.
4. You will have a healthy life if you eat a balanced diet including proteins, vitamins,
carbohydrates, minerals, sugar and fat. A healthy diet is very important because it reduces
your risk of having high blood pressure, heart disease, and some cancers and diabetes.
5. Exercise has your muscles strong and reduces the risk of developing heart disease, depression
and anxiety. Join us and do sport with us!
Yours sincerely,
P-Sport’s staff