Materials Developed to Teach Literature, History and Language (Part 2)

Approaches to Literature in the classroom

Collie and Slater (1987: 5-7) encourage the inclusion of stories in the language classroom, as literature provides valuable material, contributes to cultural and language enrichment and encourages personal involvement. In addition, Ferradas (2003: 406) supports the presence of literature in the EFL classroom on the grounds that it contributes to language development by “revealing the creative and expressive potential of language and giving learners access to new sociocultural meanings”.

Traditionally, reading has been administered in the ELT classrooms following two types of approaches: intensive and extensive reading. In broader terms, intensive reading may be described as the practice of reading to study the linguistic aspects of the text, calling the attention to grammatical forms, discourse markers, and other surface structures to obtain a literal meaning of the text (Brown, 1989). Extensive reading occurs when students read large amounts of high interest material, usually out of class, concentrating on meaning, reading for gist and skipping unknown words. According to Day and Bamford (2002:139), these materials must be within the learners' reading competence in the foreign language.

Robert Hill, as cited in David Hill (2013: 93), suggests a third approach named an expansive reading approach. It highlights the use of reading activities to go beyond the original text and explore areas such as the biography of the writer, the historical and cultural context, intertextuality, among other issues. Culture and history can be taught as students learn the language, by means of graded readers. The essential feature of these texts is the narrative, which will facilitate understanding and engagement when reading fiction whose historical context and cultural implications may be opaque. In the words of Robert Hill, in an expansive reading approach ‘the text becomes a springboard to improve language skills and to explore historical background, cultural connections and other topics suggested by the text” (Hill, 2013: 93)

The procedure taken into account to design these materials is Hill’s expansive reading approach, in which the text, in this case a graded version of Oliver Twist and a fragment of its original version, becomes a starting point to improve language skills and to explore historical background and cultural connections without overlooking the aesthetic aspects of literary texts. The version published by Express Publishing has been chosen among a great variety of collections that offer this title because it fits my context in two aspects: it matches students’ A2 level, which is necessary for them to read texts on their own; and it doesn’t contain distractors such as glossaries or activities in between chapters, which may make students loose motivation to read text (Tomlinson, 2013: 176).

Principles of learning and teaching

In order to avoid an ad hoc, spontaneous and intuitive development of the unit, I will delineate the principles of learning and teaching which guided the process of writing of these materials and which facilitated coherence and consistency, working as a framework.

1. Exposure to rich, meaningful and comprehensible input of language in use.

Students need to be exposed to specific language items and features many so that they can understand and store them for later use. Nation and Wang (1999, in Harwood, 2010: 87) state that controlled graded readers are valuable resources in this respect, since items are repeated with “an optimal space between repetitions”

2. Authenticity of materials in terms of text and/or tasks.

Widdowson (1998, in Mishan 2005: 13) claims that authenticity of texts alone is a contradiction since “Reality [...] does not travel with the text [...] What makes the text real is that it has been produced as appropriate to a particular set of contextual conditions. But because these conditions cannot be replicated, the reality disappears”. Thus, the development of these materials will emphasize what students and teacher do with the text than its occurring in a “real” environment. In fact, the text is an adaptation of a literary text whose context of production is far removed from the context of reception. What makes it “authentic” is the purpose it is applied to. Following these presuppositions, authenticity is not brought into the classroom exclusively by means of resources, it resides in the objective that teacher and students need to reach as a result of their interactions with the text.

Hill (1997: 58) takes this issue further by claiming that the authenticity of graded readers is “irrelevant”, since importance should be directed to extent to which these texts achieve the purposes for which they were produced and brought to the classroom. The author adds that the Extensive Reading Foundation have promoted the name “Language Learner Literature (LLL)” in order to avoid the prejudice against graded readers. (Hill, 2008)

3. Affective and cognitive engagement.

Hill (1997) states that graded readers provide a model of the target language which is accessible for learners due to the controlled and reduced code. In addition, as students are drawn to stories and they generally want to know what happens next, it gives learners an immediate purpose in using the language. Stories evoke different feelings of enjoyment, pleasure, happiness, empathy, which are likely to influence acquisition of the language, since, in the words of Tomlinson (2003; in Harwood, 2010: 89) positive emotions appear to stimulate deep processing. Learners need to think and feel whilst experiencing the language in order to acquire it.

4. Noticing of salient features in the input.

Tomlinson (in Harwood, 2010: 93) maintains that when students are offered opportunities to notice patterns and features about the language for themselves, they are more likely to develop language awareness. Graded readers offer exposure to the language as well as opportunities to practise and consolidate by means of repetition.

5. Opportunities to use the language for communication in context.

Materials should encourage students to go beyond basic communicative competence so that they can develop their ability to use the language fluently, accurately and effectively in varied situations and contexts (Tomlinson in Harwood, 2010: 95). Input is a crucial factor for language acquisition, but output, which is defined as language produced for communication, provides learners with opportunities to systematise the language, to receive contextualised feedback and to stretch the learner’s strategic competence to negotiate meaning. Consequently, the author believes that “setting learners achievable communicative challenges is likely to be more useful than providing easy practice”.

6. A text-driven approach to materials

Tomlinson (2013: 69) claims that children are “naturally drawn to stories” and, that storybooks produce better results than traditional coursebooks, which are generally used with older learners. To add more benefits, the author believes that the language of stories is paramount for children to develop their own narrative discourse. Besides, stories can become the springboard for engaging thematic units which integrate the four macro-skills while enhancing students’ cognitive development.

7. Skills development

Mishan and Timmis (2015: 99) distinguish the concepts of skills and strategies. The authors define skills as automatic and unconscious actions that students carry out without being aware of the steps involved and strategies as conscious procedures aimed at making learning more effective and efficient. Although the former cannot be taught but developed, materials might be designed in order to offer opportunities for strategies to be practiced and automated so that they can latter become skills.

8. Use of a graded reader

Hill (2008: 185) defines graded readers as “books written for learners of English using limited lexis and syntax, the former determined by frequency and usefulness and the latter by simplicity. Most series increase the permitted lexis and syntax in stages from beginning to advanced, with each stage presenting a more demanding reading task, not only in language but also in length and format”. He adds that these types of stories were originally commercialized order to make literature accessible to foreign learners of English whose level of the language is not yet appropriate to read the original texts, as it is the case with my students. (Hill, 1997: 57)

Materials Developed to Teach Literature, History and Language (Part 1)

Most materials developed for Language Teaching aim at achieving communicative competence, which is needed to succeed in a globalised world. As a result, materials and resources often appear to be limited to “conduct transactions and perform occupational tasks in the world outside the classroom” (Pulverness, 1999: 33). This type of commercial global material flourishes in the market, offering what is considered to be useful language for communicative purposes.

Pulverness (1999, 2007) and Ferradas (2003) state that Literature has often been neglected in ELT due to the emphasis laid on this functional or “referential language” in coursebooks, i.e.: “language which communicates at one level” (McRae, 1991: 3, in Ferradas, 2003: 406). These practices seem to disregard the potential literature has to offer “representational language”, which McRae (1991:3) defines as language whose meaning engages the imagination and interpretation of the learner in order to be decoded, going beyond the referential level. (In Ferradas, 2003: 407). Widdowson (1997:116) highlights the importance of literature as it “develops in learners an awareness of how literature functions as discourse and so to give them some access to the means of interpretation” (In Ferradas, 2003: 407).

The main reason to design materials aimed at using literature to contribute to cultural awareness through content taught within a CLIL approach was the fact that ELT has enough materials aimed at teaching functional language, but it lacks resources which integrate language and content such as literature, history and culture.

Approach to developing the materials

The development of these materials has followed humanistic and social-constructivist approaches, as they both focus on the needs of the learner.

Williams and Burden (1997: 30) acknowledge that humanistic approaches emphasize the vitality of the inner world of the learner, placing thoughts, feelings and emotions at the centre of human development. The authors claim that all human beings have a “natural potential for learning”, i.e. learning will take place if the content involved is perceived to be of personal relevance, and if it requires active participation including both feelings and cognition. The authors add that personalisation and differentiation are crucial. The former encompasses the idea that every learning experience should help learners develop a sense of personal identity, whereas the latter implies that the individual learners’ needs should be identified and targeted. As Hamacheck (1977:149) describes it: “Humanistic education starts with the idea that students are different, and it strives to help students become more like themselves and less like each other” (in Williams and Burden, 1997: 36)

In addition, Williams and Burden (1997: 43) point out that, from a social interactionist point of view, children are immersed in a social world and learning takes place through interactions with other people. Thornbury claims that through those interactions teachers provide sources of input and feedback which are crucial for language acquisition to take place in the classroom (2006: 225). When interaction takes place, learning can be adjusted to the needs of the child in order to help him/her become more competent (Cameron, 2001: 8). This was defined by Bruner (1983, in Tomlinson, 2013: 183) as scaffolding, i.e. temporary interactional support given to learners while their language system is developing, in order to perform a task at a level that might be beyond their current competence.

To program or not to program? That's the question!

Every student should have the opportunity to learn computer science since it helps foster problem-solving skills, logic and creativity. Steve Jobs claimed that “Everybody in the country should learn how to program a computer... because it teaches you how to think”. There is no need to be an expert or to start big in order to program, the only need is to be willing to accept challenges!

It is the purpose of this presentation to explore Selby and Woollard (2013) suggestions about teaching which support the XXI c skills our students need to develop computational thinking  (algorithmic thinking, evaluation, decomposition, abstraction, generalisation). Then, I will delineate an authentic teaching practice I carried out with my 6^th form students at Colegio Newlands, which proved successful for the attainment of these strategies.

Learning how to programme in the classroom becomes an authentic and meaningful task conducive to language learning (Breen1985: 61, as cited in Mishan). Students are engaged in real world activities, such as the ones experts carry out. The only difference is that the context that is used is meaningful for them at their age, and the final goal is an authentic one: to design their own videogames using Kodu, a visual programming language tool.

In this talk I will also share different experiences that teachers can carry out in order to include programming in their lessons. I will demonstrate how language, technology and content can be integrated effectively in authentic tasks which require students to develop critical thinking. For instance, students can learn about Victorian England designing the city with Minecraft. Even when there is no technology or connection at school, programming can occur in meaningful authentic contexts. The final objective is to create a PLN (Personal learning network) to create connections and contribute to our professional development for the benefit of our students.

Bibliography

Jobs, S. (2012). Interview: Steve Jobs says everyone should learn to program. Available: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mCDkxUbalCw. [Accessed 25-04-2017].

Mishan, F. (2005). Designing Authenticity into Language Learning Materials. United Kingdom: Intellect Books.

Selby, C. & Woollard, J. 2013. Computational Thinking: The Developing Definition. Available: http://eprints.soton.ac.uk/356481 [Accessed 25-04-2017].

Authentic texts or Authentic tasks? Towards a balanced reading diet

According to Alderson (1984:1) the demands of a globalised world require students to master a reading knowledge of a foreign language (FL) for their academic studies as well as for their professional and personal development. As a result, students are often assessed with a reading comprehension test that should demonstrate their reading abilities in the FL. Yet, this author claims that it is common for most students to fail to read in the FL as they seem to lack either basic understanding of texts, speed, knowledge of the language or mastery of reading strategies

One of the reasons for this failure may be derived from the lack of authentic activities. Teachers who ask students to answer direct reference questions in reading tasks do not appear to foster authentic reading comprehension compared to teachers who ask students inference questions, which go beyond the literal comprehension of information and demand for reorganization, inference, prediction, evaluation and personal response.

According to Van Lier (1996: 128, as cited in Mishan, 2005:15) authenticity does not get into the classroom by means of the materials or lesson plan, it is realised in the act of interpretation, and may be judged in terms of the degree of participation and personal involvement of the learner with the text. This idea has critical implication for the pedagogical classroom since what is important is what we do with a reading text rather than whether it belongs to a ‘real’ context.

It is the purpose of this presentation to address teachers’ current practices in relation to reading tasks in an attempt to help them broaden the scope of activities aimed at the readers’ understanding of written texts within an authentic pedagogical act. This talk will offer ideas on how to aim at authentic reading tasks which foster the acquisition of comprehension strategies. As Clarke puts it ‘teaching materials should reflect the authentic communicative purpose of the text’ (1989: 75, as cited in Mishan, 2005:71)

References:

Alderson, J.C. (1984). Reading in a foreign language: a reading problem or a language problem? In J.C. Alderson and A. H. Urquhart (eds.), Reading in a Foreign Language (pp 1-24). New York: Longman.

Mishan, F. (2005). Designing Authenticity into Language Learning Materials. United Kingdom: Intellect Books.

Around the world in 80 days

Global Cooking, Global Fun

New year, new projects

Last December I mentioned in my last post about XXI century skills for education: learning to know, learning to do, learning to be, learning to live together. (Delors, 1996), This year, Clau and I decided to start with a new project about feelings and emotions, about being comfortable together, about learning to be in the group. The project was called "My shoes, your shoes" and studens enjoyed it a lot! They shared different experiences and how they felt about them, as well as the way the people helped them overcome difficult situations. Students praised each other and put themselves into their partners shoes. Together we laughed, we cried, but, most importantly, we learnt that we need to look around and beyond ourselves.

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