Teaching English in a Secondary School !

Well, we are in september beginning a new school year.

I’m the only person left in the department, EVERY BODY IS NEW.

Some of my previous colleges have moved to other schools, another has health problems…

There have also been an important change, as a new Management Board has recently entered in our school.

So things will slow down again… :

But this summer I came across with some interesting articles on getting teenagers speaking in secondary schools. I recomend them to anyone interested in ELT!!!

They are from a web  called Teaching English from the British Council

Getting teenagers to talk

Increasing student interation

Teaching Speaking Skills 2- Overcoming classroom problems

Speaking and elementary learners

Evaluating speaking

Evaluating speaking-part 2

This is my department final report for this school year, it is a kind of memorandum, a revision on what has been done during the school year, the things achieved and the things to achive…

However, the most important question for me as head of the  English department is to make our school leaders aware of how our English classes have improved  since one of the three classes given to each group every week one is done with half of  the group.

Now,  we hope to improve our working conditions for next year to improve in the same way the quality of our English classes.

We’ll see next  school year…

Here you have the complete document,

Valoració :

Valorem molt POSITIVAMENT els agrupament del tipus HORES B que s’han portat a terme durant aquest any, amb ells assolim la tan necessària reducció de la ratio; hem constatat que aquest tipus d’agrupament és molt més efectiu i beneficiós per els nostres alumnes molt més que les hores de desdoblament quinzenals que haviem fet es cursos passats i que encara s’han portat a terme al 1r de batxiller .

Les hores B suposen que un mateix professor té un mateix grup quatre hores a la setmana, 2 hores normals i dues amb mig grup, mentre que a l’hora quinzenal un professor té 3 hores de classe amb el grup, una d’elles és amb mig grup i l’altre mig grup està amb un altre porf. d’anglès, això suposava un gran nombre d’inconvenients, els més importants són:

– Que es requereix un alt grau de coordinació entre els professor d’un mateix nivell, que en alguns cassos són dos o tres profs per un mateix nivell.

– Quan hi ha un dia de festa els continguts s’allarguen molt en el tems i els alumnes perden el fil.

– Els alumnes no recorden que van fer quinze dies enrere. Moltes altres vegades no recorden quin o quina professora els toca aquella setmana.

Soms conscients que el Centre ha fet un gran esforç per aconseguir LES HORES B a TOTS ELS NIVELLS d’ESO i el departament valora POSITIVAMENT aquest tipus d’organització.

aquest any hem celebrat el 1r ENGLISH DAY a l’institut el dia

30 de Gener, relacionat amb el Dia de la Pau . I a continiació en fem el resum la valoració de l’activitat.

Incentivar valors com la tolerància, la no violència i la solidaritat tot practicant una llengua estrangera ha estat el motiu principal per el qual el passat divendres 30 de gener es va celebrar el primer “English Day” al IES Olivar Gran de Figueres. Tots els alumnes del centre, gairebé 500, van celebrar el dia de la PAU durant les cinc hores de classe fent activitats en anglès relacionades amb la Pau.

Durant les tres primeres hores de classe tots els alumnes de primer i segon de batxiller van incorporar-se a les classes d’ESO per jugar en un entorn col·laboratiu amb els alumnes d’ESO a jocs diversos com “Pass the Word, Riddles, Board Games, Catergories, Hangman…” tots ells basats, principalment, en treball del vocabulari relacionat amb la pau en anglès però, també consolidant els seus coneixements de geografia, música, plàstica, tecnologia … i altres temes tan actuals com els conflictes armats o com treballa l’ONU per assolir la pau al mon i millorar les vides dels desafavorits.

Mes tard, i també en grups, els alumnes van realitzar pòsters sobre alguns personatges rellevants que han treballat activament en favor de la pau Gandhi, Martin Luther King, Nelson Madela, Mare Teresa de Calcuta, Kofi Annan, Rigoberta Menchú entre d’altres.

Després de l’esbarjo es va fer la cerimònia de lliurament dels premis convocats amb motiu d’aquesta celebració: els alumnes del centre, en grups de tres o quatre, i voluntàriament havien de prestar un vídeo de pocs minuts de duració en anglès on es treballessin temes com la no-violència, els vuit objectius de mil·lenni proclamats per la ONU o la pau en general. Dels més de 30 vídeos presentats els guanyadors van ser:

Estel Ñíguez de segon de batxiller i Alex Génova de 3er d’ESO com a vídeo més artístic.

Eva Martí, Zaida Peinado i Raquel Carmona al 1er cicle d’ESO.

Marta Casanovas, Marta Moreno,i Raquel Valentín , Elisabet de Haro, Cristina Bartrina, Camila Reyes i Marta Arolas, a segon cicle d’ESO.

Lidia March, Tamara Robles, Maria Aguilar Carles Llorca, Brian Juan, Pere Ballart i Adrià Ramos de 1r de Batxiller.

Tots ells van rebre un diploma d’excel·lència i un petit obsequi.

Per últim i com a fi de festa es va fer una cantada per cursos de cançons relacionades amb el tema .

Donada la bona acollida per part de l’alumnat i professorat del centre, l’equip directiu i l’equip organitzador ja estan pensant en el proper tema del que tractarà l’English day del curs vinent.

Per més informació tenim el bloc següent:

http://englishdayolivargran.blogspot.com/

Both appeared this summer in the Catalan edition of EL PAIS newspaper:

“La selectividad tendrá prueba oral de inglés en 2012”

M. RUIZ DEL ÁRBOL – Madrid – 10/07/2008

“The students who are at 3rd of ESO will be the first to have to pass an oral exam of English or any other foreing lamguage when the have the seletivity Exam in the school year 2011/2012” declared Eva Almunia, the Secretary of State for Education, when she presneted the Real Decreto Project which changes the Seletivity exams.Almunia states this reform will cause a deep chage in the methodology on this language teaching…

“El inglés no arranca en la escuela”

FERRAN BALSELLS – Barcelona – 24/07/2008

This is a summary:

Less than a half of the Catalán students have a basic knowledge of English when they finish their secondary school. This level does not fulfill our domestic labour market.

A study carried by The Catalan Education Board with 4th of ESO students in 2006 concluded that only 40% of the students passed the oral basic level exams established by the EOI.

This level mentioned before wouldn’t be enough, according to EOI, to achieve a job where English was required. It only enables a person to ask for a drink in a pub in London but he/she would have some difficulty to ask for the change… and all this at a very slow pace.

The article finishes with the Catalan Conseller d’educació, Ernest Maragall, who explains that we will have to wait some years, not until 2015, to see the results of  their  project  aiming to stimulate the foreign languages learning started by the Education Board in 2007.

But teachers claim they are tired of the government’s promises, they feel the same as they were in the nineties with big  multi level groups inside a same class and  despite of the  omnipresence of the ICT’s  and globalization only a few students achieve a good level of English, most of them only achieve a good one by taking private lessons outside school.

After this term (1st 2008/9) my teacher mates and I are quite optimistic.

It seems we are  improving the quality of our teaching for several reasons:

1st we have achieved great support from our School Headmaster and its staff, as they have improved our teaching conditions a lot.

–           A foreign languages classroom with 10 computers, a Hi-fi audio system, TV, DVD and video players and a projector  “Canó”

–          Four hours teaching in all ESO classes and 1st of Batxillerat, two of them with half of the class ( desdoblament=hores B)

2nd we are still working on European projects …………….

3rd The  number of teachers and students using computers to  teach, learn  and practice English has very much increased:  Treasure Hunts, Blogs, Podcasts etc.. are used commonly in class.

Today I have received the first registered dialogue from my 2nd of Batxiller students, and our forum on moral dilemmas is working pretty well. See my edublog.

The personal portfolios of my 1st ESO students are great and they are very motivated in writing in them, next step adding their own recordings, some of the best are:

http://kamelia-girl.blogspot.com/

http://noeliaseoane.blogspot.com/

It has been difficult to start but using blogs in class for young students and as homework for batxiller students seems it’s going to be a great hit.

What can we do to make our students speak? Is it possible or should we just give up as a lost cause? Why don’t they? Where is the problem?…

As I said at the beginning of the project:

The teacher Portfolio is a tool for lifelong learning and professional development. It is a very useful tool when you are thinking, writing and talking about your teaching past, present or future.

We have learnt from Thornbury the three stages of a general approach to this skill development: awareness-rising, appropriation and autonomy. We have also studied and practised some ways of integrating speaking into the language curriculum. And finally we have reflected on its assessment.

But there is still a lot of research to do and a lot of different experiences to take, speaking represents a real challenge, it needs to be very much developed and practised.

We have just began working with videos downloaded from the internet, also with blogs, forums, wikis… but there are other ICT possibilities to explore, such as podcasting, karaoking, broadcasting videos, using tools such as “hot potatoes”, “Widows Media Player”, “Audacity”…and anything related to what is called m-learning.

As far other interesting theoretical aspects we still have to deal with some further reading are: Assessing Secondary School Students’ Oral Interaction: Opening Paths for Better Learning APAC Monograph n. 4; or Ron Carter’s article Spoken Grammar, Written Grammars: from Corpus to Classroom. APAC magazine n. 60….

Anyone can see the possibilities to work on and to study are endless. In that sense we are claiming to have more “hores B”, ideally for every grupclass in the school, we are also going to ask for an “auxiliar de conversa” next year and invest some money to have, at least, three more computers in the foreign languages classroom.

Finally, we also think that it is not difficult to use ICT in or for our English classes; they can help us to add to our classes the “spice” that we might need to get from our student the extra degree of motivation that can frequently make a difference between a successful or unsuccessful class.

The evaluation of the success or failure of our work is similar to the evaluation of the conversation performance of our students; both are a difficult job.

Everyone knows that in a conversation there is a variety of factors which include: the speaker’s accent, the control of the grammar and vocabulary, an overall fluency…and all of them contribute to have a good oral production.

Having obtained a sample of a learner’s speaking, there are two ways of assessing it: we can either give a holistic score that’s to say based on an overall impression or give a different score for different aspects of the task, the analytic score. The first case is quicker and adequate for informal testing progress. The analytic scoring takes longer, teachers have to take into account a variety of factors like the ones mentioned before, this way of testing seems fairer and more reliable but it has the disadvantage of having too many factors into account we can lose the sight of the overall picture.

On the other hand, it is also very important to give our students a feedback so that they get the information they need to improve in their performance. It needs to be staged and selective as to avoid demoralizing the students. To achieve this we think that we must to decide on which areas of the communicative performance we and the students need to focus on, from our point of view some of the most important could be:

– Appropriate use of vocabulary or “chunks” phrases.

– Fluency, turn-taking skill… that’s to say communication strategies.

– Pronunciation.

– And to a certain extent the grammatical correctness.

For this reason we chose to use an analytic method to test our students’ production, but not to mark the oral activities done in class, we find quite difficult to correct mistakes made during every speaking activity. It is not the same correcting either a drill aimed to improve pronunciation or a passionate discussion about a hot topic…on some other activities we give our students an assessment sheet in which we tell them beforehand the most relevant aspects we are going to have into account.

It has been particularly interesting to see how our point of view is also shared by other teachers (even other languages teachers) when asked in a forum about this hot topic: Click on top of the page iF you want to read it.

It is true that it is easy to be impressed by the technology to the point of forgetting that perhaps a more traditional approach might work better. Technology in itself does not ensure quality either.

Teachers have realized that new technologies can help our students’ learning process a lot, they are…

· motivating

· offer a great amount of input

· develop learner’s autonomy

· give a lot of opportunities for practicing the language

Trying to be effective in our work is a hard work and it very tiring. However, we have the feeling that the teachers do not get burnt-out so much by the teaching job itself, they feel disappointed when they detect that their learners are not interested in what they are doing. We think that the more we give to our students, in terms of preparing our class sessions, the more they receive from them and the learners are motivated, enjoy their lessons and succeed in learning English.

Scott Thornbury in his book How to Teach Speaking explains that teachers must find ways of raising the learner’s awareness about some special features of the speaking, for example by…

· Re-performing an original task, attempting to incorporate their own targeted features.

· Focusing in vocabulary and speaking grammar…

· Observing more skilled practitioners.

This new-found knowledge must be gradually integrated into the learners’ already existing speaking competence. That is, the knowledge needs to be appropriated. Activities aimed at appropriation provide learners with a supportive framework in which they can practice, some are:

• · Drilling

• · Reading aloud

• · Making some writing task which allows longer processing time than does any other speaking task…

The support needs to be gradually reduced so as to encourage a degree of independence, which in turn requires a degree of appropriation, we can do it by reducing the planning time, withdrawing our teaching support, performing a task in public…

These are two stages of the three-stage model of this skill development. The third final step is: autonomy. Learners can achieve greater autonomy in speaking and even a capacity for self-development with activities such as:

· Giving presentations and talks

· Telling stories, anecdotes

· Performing drama activities, discussions, debates…

Feedback on such activities need to be handled sensitively so as to respect the learners’ need to experience autonomy, but at the same time, to provide a useful feedback loop for the improvement. Some ways of learners can take responsibility for developing their speaking skills outside the classroom include:

· Taped dialogues, or podcasting.

· Computer-mediated communication.

· Reflective journals or portfolios…

Having our own experience and the opinion of the experts into account, we see that good language teaching, and especially speaking, as a slow process: it is important to get students involved in activities which develop their speaking confidence and it can require a lot of patience, especially at early stages, but when the students finally overcome their limitations they are able to express themselves quite confidently

After eight years working in bad physical conditions last year me moved from our old barracks to a new big building. But, in my opinion, one the most important changes has been the increase of the number of students and, obviously, teachers as well. There are six English teachers this year.

This has good and bad points; the good point is that we can now offer one or two hours of “desdoblament” in all the courses except in 2^nd year of “batxillerat”.

There are 4 courses of 1^st of ESO of about 25 students in each classroom; the teachers have two classes with all the students and two more with half of them every week. (hora B). The same happens in 4^th of ESO with also four groups.

There are 4 courses of 2^nd of ESO of about 30 students in each class more or less and the teachers have two classes with all the students every week and one more only with half of the students every two weeks. (desdoblament quinzenal). And the same happens in the four groups of 3^rd of ESO and 1^st of Batxiller two groups.

Of the nineteen class-groups we have today only eight of them have what we call “hora b”, and all the rest have “hora de Desdoblament” every two weeks, except one , as 2^nd of Batxiller hasn’t got any. The increase in the numbers of all these “non-conventional classes”, together with the increase of the number of teachers has made the teachers’ coordination quite difficult, in the sense that there are a lot of different teachers teaching at a same level and, in most of the cases there are two teachers teaching a same group class this means a great effort in coordination and most on the times an hour meeting every week is not enough.

This is our new Foreign Languages classroom, we’ve got seven computers and a printer, a laptop that works together with a projector -both portable -, a TV with a DVD and a video player and an overhead projector and we will have three more computers too.