Sky-High Attendance in 6 Quick Steps

Study after study has proven what we teachers know instinctively: Empty chairs can’t learn English. Early findings suggest something to do with neuroplasticity. I kid, but really, before we can even begin to talk about methodology or outcomes or any of the stuff we come to the TESOL Blog to learn more about, we’ve first got to fill those seats and keep them full.

Like health, attendance is all about planning ahead, yet too often do we only think of it looking backward, when problems have already arisen, when it’s often too late to do much about it. Just like our health, we want to adopt a forward-thinking mindset and take preventative measures.

In this post I’ll share six tips to keep attendance high for the duration your course.

1. Anticipate Barriers

It’s important to anticipate the likely obstacles to attendance at the very start of the course, and then to walk your students through some solutions. This can be part of the intake process, an orientation, your first class, or all three. There are a lot of ways to go about this, but here’s one that we have used as part of orientation day at my program:

Start by arranging students in groups of four to eight and ask them to brainstorm reasons that they might miss class. Childcare, work schedules, transportation, sickness, weather. After about 5 minutes, reconvene and record their answers on the board. Then guide students through the process of sorting out valid reasons for missing class from not-so-valid reasons (of course, what constitutes an acceptable excuse will vary from program to program). Then assign each group one of the more common barriers that you see in your program, and give them time to brainstorm some solutions to that barrier. Then have groups share. This can be verbal or on the board, or you can even encourage them to put together quick skits.

In my program, one common reason for low attendance is an unstable work schedule, so one group of students shared the language that you can use to ask your boss to adjust your schedule. They also proposed a solid backup plan: a letter from the program coordinator to their boss (we regularly write such letters and have found that they often help).

2. Establish Accountability

Also at the start of the course, it’s essential to convey to students what you expect them to do if they do need to miss class. I recommend a call or email to the teacher (or the office, if that’s an option at your program). If you’d rather not give your students your personal contact info, you can easily set up a Google Voice number specially for this purpose. I’ve seen some teachers use the first 5 minutes of class to have students call or text their friends who have yet to arrive.

3. Follow Up

Making follow-up calls is one of the easiest and most impactful things you can do to keep up attendance numbers (and persistence!). Some programs will call after the second consecutive absence; at mine we try to call after each absence, with great results. Except in the case of chronic absenteeism, these calls aren’t disciplinary or reproachful. They’re a friendly check-in: Good morning, Sofia! It’s Rob from your English classes. I just noticed you weren’t in class yesterday. Is everything okay? Will we see you on Monday? Great! Thanks!

4. Do the Math

Data is an important tool when it comes to attendance. At a minimum, you want to be calculating each student’s attendance over the course of the semester. But doing this alone, you’re still looking backward at attendance. I recommend keeping a running attendance rate for each student, and a simple spreadsheet equation is an easy way to do this. This way you can warn students as soon as their attendance dips into dangerous territory, giving them plenty of time to recover. With just a little more work, any spreadsheet app can turn your numbers into charts to help students visualize how their attendance compares to that of their classmates and to your expectations.

Another idea worth exploring is to have students calculate their own attendance periodically. This keeps their awareness up, drives home the idea that attendance really matters to you, and can even easily be turned into a friendly competition. Moreover, it introduces some important math skills and the language that comes along with it, which is increasingly important in adult ed programs.

5. Be Consistent

We as teachers can have a tendency to slip just as much as students. Putting off our follow-up calls, making an exception just this once for a particularly apologetic student, threatening consequences without following through: We can always rationalize these little slippages at the time, but we need to remember that they have a cumulative impact on attendance.

6. Use Projects

There are plenty of pedagogical reasons that teachers are talking about project-based learning. It’s got all kinds of benefits to student affect and outcomes. But one of the less-talked-about effects of project-based learning is boosted attendance. Collaborative class projects not only increase motivation, they organically bring about the social accountability and responsibility that can get your students out of their warm beds, off their comfy couches, and into those wonderful donated molded plastic unpadded desk-chairs that squeak and threaten to give when you sit with the gum underneath and the…

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Everyday with ELLs!

Hello everyone,

April over at Teacher Say Teacher Do has a great freebie to download and I wanted to share it with you!

She made a colorful visual one page reminder for teachers of the most effective strategies to use when working with second language learners.

Click here to go to her Teachers Pay Teachers store  and download your free copy today!

Happy Teaching! 

Lori
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Scaffolding Instruction!

Hi everyone!

Welcome!   I would like to look at scaffolding in instruction.  What is it?  How do we do it?

When teachers break learning into smaller chunks and give students temporary support, structure and tools to work with each of those chunks, we call this scaffolding.   Scaffolding starts with high temporary support and then gradually support is taken away.  Scaffolding includes a variety of essential techniques that helps move the learner toward higher levels of understanding and independence when learning.  Scaffolding can be used in a broad range of content areas and grade levels.  Let’s look at a few of my favorites.

To access and build common background knowledge begin with a shared experience:

•       a video

•       a shared reading

Graphic Organizers:

•       Venn Diagrams and Double Bubble Charts to compare and contrast information

•       Mind Maps help show relationships, note taking and book summaries

•       Flow charts to show processes

•    Rubrics that show what is expected on an assignment

Question,Task or Cue Cards:

·      Teacher made cards given to students that frame a topic or subject.

·      Target and signal words and vocabulary lists with definitions that are content specific.  Provide lists of transition words and conjunctions.   Add new words to the lists as you use and discover them.

·      Topic or content sentence frames that students must complete.  Use sentence frames to  Use sentence forms and sentence starters to support the use of complete sentences in writing and spoken discourse.  Use these for both whole group and partner discussions.

support written ideas. Begin with simple sentences and build to compound sentences.

Provide visual word walls – add new words as you go along.

 

What are some of your favorite scaffolding techniques?  Which do you find work best with second language learners?

Happy Teaching!

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Pronunciation Perspectives Part 2: A Video Conversation with Tracey Derwing

In a recent post, I shared portions of my video interview with Dr. Tracey Derwing, coauthor of Pronunciation Fundamentals: Evidence-Based Perspectives for L2 Teaching and Research (Derwing & Munro, 2015). Here, I bring you more from that interview, focusing on Derwing & Munro’s early work together and how they went about writing their new book.

I received my copy of Pronunciation Fundamentals just last week, and I can already say this: Derwing and Munro have achieved what seems to elude many. That is, they’ve written a book that communicates their message accessibly and, well, humanly (and therefore humanely, especially if you are a graduate student who will read this book not by choice, but rather by assignment). Indeed, this is a book that should be assigned reading in TESOL education programs.

As Derwing explains early on in the interview, Pronunciation Fundamentals delivers a central message through its 10 chapters, namely, that the time has come for teachers of English to stop teaching for native-like accuracy and instead teach for intelligibility and comprehensibility. (Intelligibility is how much the listener understands of the speaker’s speech; comprehensibility is how much effort is required to understand that same speaker. For more on these concepts, read my related post.)

Like reading her book, listening to Derwing is a pleasure. She reflects on the ideas that intrigued her most during the early part of her teaching career. We get to see how living and working with authentic passion can lead us into the unexpected. In Derwing’s case, she was interested in teacher-to-learner comprehensibility (i.e., how some of her colleagues were more easily understood by their L2 students than other colleagues) at a time when pronunciation research was mostly limited to spectrograms and room-sized computers.

With one simple question, Derwing dispels the myth that teaching pronunciation is inherently an attack on the learner’s identity. “How can you express who you are if no one can understand you?”, asks Derwing, making a case for pronunciation instruction as a matter of professional ethics.

What does this mean for teachers? For one, it means we need to rethink the way we talk about accent with our students. We all have accents, and we all achieve greater and lesser levels of intelligibility (and comprehensibility) throughout a given day. (Think caffeine, think fatigue.) Accents cannot be “eliminated” any more than we can “not have” a temperature. What we can do is help students expand the repertoire of their speech patterns to more effectively reach the listening expectations of the people they speak with most. Note the human component here: It takes two to communicate.

It goes without saying that you should get your own copy of Pronunciation Fundamentals, but let me ask: With what you’ve read and heard here, what are you left thinking about? No doubt you’ve got a few good comments and questions worth sharing.

Reference

Derwing, T. M., & Munro, M. J. (2015). Pronunciation fundamentals: Evidence-based perspectives for L2 teaching and research. Amsterdam: John Benjamins.

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Debunking 5 Myths of U.S. Immigration

The Republican Presidential campaign has added fire to the discussions about immigration in the United States. In this blog,  I would like to review some of the immigration myths that are propagated by politicians and offer resources backing up the facts on immigration. It is my feeling that the anti-immigration rhetoric by candidates for president of the United States will affect the learning environment that ELs encounter in our schools. ELs need a supportive school community in order to succeed in school, and anti-immigration sentiments may affect this. It is our job as ESL teachers to learn the facts about immigration and defuse some of these misconceptions in our schools.

MYTH #1: There is a huge increase of the number of immigrants in the United States.

FACT: The number of undocumented immigrants living in the United States has declined from 12.2 million in 2007 to 11.3 million in 2013. According to Homeland Security, of the more than 41 million foreign-born people living in the United States in 2013, about 30 million were naturalized citizens, permanent residents, and legal residents. Of the 11.3 million undocumented immigrants, about 40% entered the country legally and then let their visas expire.

MYTH #2:  Immigrants are responsible for high crime rates in the United States.

FACT: According to a special July 2015 report by the American Immigration Council, immigrants are less likely to be incarcerated than native-born citizens.  Incarceration rates among young men are lowest for immigrants, especially for the Mexicans, Salvadorans, and Guatemalans who make up the bulk of the undocumented population, according to the Justice Department. The American Immigration Council presents statistics in its 2015 report to show that high immigration rates are, in fact, associated with lower crime rates.

MYTH #3: Immigrants take jobs from American citizens.

FACT: According to the Immigration Policy Center, there is little connection between immigrant jobs and unemployment rates of native-born workers. Better education and an aging U.S. population have resulted in a decrease in the number of Americans willing or available to take low-paying jobs. Immigrants and native-born workers do not frequently compete for the same jobs. Immigrants are more likely to be employed by the service industry, while native-born workers are more likely to hold jobs in management, sales, and office occupations.

MYTH #4: Immigrants come to the United States for welfare benefits.

FACT: According to the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, undocumented immigrants are not eligible for federal benefits programs. They can not receive Social Security benefits,
Supplemental Security Income, Temporary Assistance for Needy Families, Medicaid, Medicare, or food stamps. Even most legal  immigrants cannot receive these benefits until they have been in the United States for 5 years or longer, regardless of how much they have worked or paid in taxes.

MYTH #5: Undocumented immigrants don’t pay taxes but still get benefits, including free education for their children.

FACT: All immigrants pay taxes every time they buy gas or purchase other items that are taxed. They also pay property taxes when they buy or rent a house or apartment. (Schools are funded mostly by these property taxes.) A new 50-state study, Undocumented Immigrants’ State and Local Tax Contributions, by the Institute on Taxation and Economic Policy, finds that the 11.4 million undocumented immigrants currently living in the United States collectively paid $11.84 billion in state and local taxes in 2012. Since undocumented immigrants don’t have the benefit of welfare programs, the ratio between immigrant use of public benefits and the number of tax dollars they pay is consistently favorable to the United States.

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Could you be a Grammar Nerd?

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Critical Thinking About Technology: An ELT Activity

Our world is awash in new technology. New electronic gadgets, new smartphone apps, and new forms of social media abound. But which of these will stand the test of time? And how do these dazzling technology innovations compare in significance to those of the past?

This was the critical thinking and speaking task that I recently asked my advanced adult ELLs to tackle as a prelude to watching a series of TED Talks and YouTube videos about technological innovations ranging from 3D printing to a windmill build from scrap materials by a 14-year old in Malawi .

In groups of three, I asked my students to think about the long sweep of human history and to come up with their own list of 10 technological innovations that they deemed to have had the greatest impact on humanity. I then asked them to examine each item on their list, and see if they could agree within their group on how to rank those innovations, with #1 being the absolutely most significant, #2 the next most significant, and so on until they reached #10.

Making their initial lists of technological innovations turned out to be relatively easy for members of each team to agree on. Much harder was to reach consensus on how to rank the various items on their list in terms of significance. This task provoked extended arguments as students challenged their teammates and tried to persuade each other why one technological innovation deserved a higher (or lower) ranking.

Here are the initial lists my students created and posted on the white board for other teams to examine:

Rank Order	Group #1	Group #2	Group #3
#1	Electricity	Alternating current	Telephone
#2	Internet	Internet	Computers
#3	Computer	Cars	Light bulb
#4	Wheel	Boats	Wheel
#5	Radio	Wheel	Steam engine
#6	Telephone	Satellite	Printing press
#7	Airplanes	Printing	Airplanes
#8	Batteries	Smart phones	Automobiles
#9	Light bulb	Airplane	Oil refining
#10	Motor	Phones	Flat iron

The lists were fascinating in both their similarities and their differences. In order to take advantage of these differences, I rearranged the groups, so that now, each new group of three consisted of a representative from each of the original groups. Their new critical thinking and speaking task was to examine the three lists, notice any significant differences, and cross-examine each other about the differences. Why, for instance, did Group #3 leave the Internet off its list? Why did Group #1 not consider the printing press to be a Top 10 technological innovation? And why did Group #2 consider satellites and alternating current to be so significant?

Finally, as a whole group, we looked at what was missing from the lists. No group, for instance, included any medical advances on their list. I challenged them to fill in some of the gaps, and students nominated penicillin, X-rays, and anesthesia as major medical innovations.  Interestingly to me, no one mentioned any of the major technological innovations in the field of warfare (the invention of gunpowder, the modern rifle, or the atom bomb).

Together, we made a list of some of these missing innovations. I put the students back in their original groups and asked them to decide whether they wanted to change their original lists in any way to incorporate any of these additional innovations. If so, which items on their original list of 10 would they remove to make way for one of the “missing” innovations? And how, if at all, would that change their initial rankings?

All in all, this activity provided well over an hour of critical thinking and speaking practice. How do you use ranking activities to promote critical thinking and debate?

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ESP For Social Change: What Is Your Passion?

Hello, ESPers worldwide!

How often do you ask yourself the following questions?

1. Who are my students?
2. Why are they learning English?
3. Why am I teaching them English?
4. In addition to English communication skills, what are my students learning from me?

As ESPers, I think that we ask and answer questions 1 to 3 in a typical needs analysis. In this TESOL Blog post, however, I would like to explore all four questions in the context of ESP for social change.

Social change is something that I have often seen in the dreams and activities of non-ESPers in TED Talks. For example, I was recently looking for TED Talks related to surfing, as one of my personal dreams is to spend time in the waves on a surfboard! I came across the following: Just Add Surf: Easkey Britton at TEDxDublin. A bit more web-surfing (no pun intended) took me to Waves of Freedom where Dr. Britton is listed as co-founder and chief disruption officer. The mission of the organization starts off with: “The power of surfing as a creative medium for positive social change.”

Dr. Britton’s organization above is an example of connecting one’s passion (e.g., surfing) with social change (e.g., the empowerment of women worldwide). After watching her TED Talk, I asked myself the question, “What is your passion?” In my case, I love my work! I am passionate about what I do as a researcher and trainer in the field of professional communication in English.

After answering the question above, I began to think about how the work I was doing was related to social change. What came to  my mind was that my joy as a teacher is empowering my students to create and to achieve visions independently and in collaboration with others. In the classroom, I aim to create a learning community in which my students develop into better learners, communicators, and leaders.

As leaders, my students decide themselves how they want to change their environments. For example, one of my undergraduate student teams in a leadership seminar decided to create an event to clean a local beach. Another team chose to teach English to children at an orphanage. A third team professionally managed a live comedy performance in Tokyo in order to raise money for the victims of an earthquake and tsunami in Japan. Other students have created leadership seminars on campus featuring CEOs of organizations as well as student leaders of campus clubs. Such project-based learning is connected to my own conceptualization of leadership as achieving visions in collaboration with others.

In the ESP project leader profiles, I also see the drive for social change. Consider the four ESP project leader profiles that have been posted since May 2015. (Please click on the names of the ESP project leaders to read their profiles.)

• Kristin Ekkens
• Charles Hall
• Ronna Timpa
• Evan Frendo

What do you see in those four ESP project leader profiles? From a social change perspective, I see a focus on “inclusion and diversity,” “helping the poorest of the poor,” “empowerment of staff in the hospitality industry,” and “improving the quality of corporate training worldwide.” People seem to know how they want to change the world.

I think that we need to give thought to how we can leverage our research skills, program development skills, and training skills to improve the world. When I watch TED Talks and read the ESP project leader profiles, I am reminded that changing the world is not impossible, although it may require us to work harder.

In regard to hard work, consider the success story of Lani Lazarri, the owner of Simple Sugars. (I mentioned Shark Tank and Simple Sugars in a previous blog post. Ms. Lazarri was driven to develop a skin care product based on her own personal need.) As Sara Bauknecht writes on the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette website:

“Shark Tank” not only introduced Miss Lazzari to Mr. Cuban but also to other entrepreneurs who’ve had their time in the tank. They find each other on social media and swap “Shark Tank” stories and business experiences. For Miss Lazzari, one of the greatest lessons she’s learned along the way is to trust herself, even when what’s ahead seems impossible.

“If someone had told me before ‘Shark Tank’ that I would be working until 3 in the morning for six weeks straight … I think I would have been, ‘Oh my gosh. How am I going to be able to handle it?’

“You really just have to get to work and work through it, and you’ll get there in the end.”

In view of the above, one good idea is for ESPers to strengthen our connections and our convictions through our interactions with each other.

In closing, I would like to share with you another TED Talk that inspired me in connection with social change. Former U.S. President Jimmy Carter (“Peace activist”) talks about “why [he believes] the mistreatment of women is the number one human rights abuse.” As Phil Collins sings in one of his songs, “Another Day in Paradise,” we should all “think about it!” After that, we should do something about it!

All the best,

Kevin

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5 Icebreakers for English Interaction

In the United States, it’s that time of year again, when students and teachers excitedly (reluctantly?) return to the classroom after summer vacation. First and foremost, you’ll want to get your students talking to you and to each other!

In the language classroom, interaction provides many benefits. First, interaction may give students the chance to provide each other with comprehensible input, or input that is slightly above the learner’s current level of language acquisition. Slower, simplified speech, repeated vocabulary, and a chance to negotiate meaning may help students better understand English in use. Second, interaction promotes opportunities for students to use the language, thus producing output. Producing output lets students notice their errors and determine if the person with whom they are speaking understood the message. Finally, talking to each other, learning names, and building a classroom community can help lower students’ affective filter, which is the idea that a learner’s ability to acquire language is reduced when they are experiencing stress, anxiety, fear, or other negative emotions. Interaction can build peer-to-peer and student-to-teacher relationships that may help your learners feel more comfortable and less anxious about using language in the classroom.

Whether you’ve been out of school for a few months, or you simply need to refresh strategies for interaction in your classroom, you’ll want to give the techniques below a try!

• Find someone who: In this activity, the teacher prepares a list of statements, such as, “Find someone who has three siblings; find someone who has a pet; find someone who likes to read Harry Potter; find someone who likes to jog.” Students then go around the classroom and ask their peers which statement applies to them. They write their classmate’s name next to the criteria that matches them. Teachers can write statements appropriate to their age group and context to be sure students have something to talk about!
• Mingle-Mingle: The teacher prepares as many open-ended questions as there are students in the class on strips of paper. If you have a large class of 30, for example, you can prepare a list of 15 questions and make 2 sets of the same questions. The questions should be designed to enable students to converse about themselves, such as, “What was the best movie you saw this year? What did you like about it?” or “What is your favorite hobby? Why do you like to spend time on that hobby?” Students each receive a question and pair up to ask their partner the question they have. Then, after each student has asked and answered each other’s question, they switch questions and find a new partner. Then, they have a new question to ask the new partner. Have students repeat the process three times so they have three original conversations.
• Family Crest: This strategy allows students and the teacher to share personal information about themselves in a visual format. Using a family crest template, the teacher asks the students to draw symbols or images that represent them, their family, their hobbies or pastimes, their experiences, or their values. Then, students bring their completed crest to class. They can present their crest to the entire class, or share them in pairs or small groups to save time and be less intimidating. Display the crests in the classroom so everyone can see commonalities and differences—another great discussion point!
• Interview/Introduce Your Partner: Rather than have students introduce themselves to the class, provide them with a short list of questions and have them interview a partner. When the interview is complete for both partners, have each student introduce the partner they interviewed. Language learners may feel more comfortable talking about another person rather than themselves, and the pair conversation allows them to rehearse their speech before they talk to the whole class.
• 2 Truths and a Lie: Incorporating writing as well as listening and speaking, this strategy has students write three statements about themselves: two that are true and one that is false. The teacher then reads the statements aloud and the class tries to guess which ones are true and which is false. The false ones tend to be funny, and can lighten the mood of the class as you get to know each other.

Feel free to post other icebreaker strategies that have worked well for you in the comments!

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Taking TESOL to the World: Vietnam

The TESOL President’s Blog

In the previous TESOL President’s Blog post, I wrote about leading and managing change and innovation, which was one of the main themes of TESOL International Association’s first symposium in Vietnam last month, which followed the association’s first academy in India, in April. These first-time TESOL International events are clear indicators and concrete examples of how the association is continuing to grow and develop, and to become even more international, in response to the changing needs, wants, and demographics of its members.

The symposium in Vietnam (sometimes written as Viet Nam) took place on 28 and 29 July and was held in Danang (or Da Nang), which is a coastal city in central Vietnam, with an estimated population of around 750,000, making it the country’s third largest city (by population).

TESOL President Andy Curtis and Executive Director Rosa Aronson with key University of Danang, University of Foreign Language, and National Foreign Language 2020 personnel

I’m sometimes asked about how the locations are chosen for the association’s academies and symposia, and a great many factors and features are carefully considered before a location is finally agreed upon. One of those factors relates to following a different path, and not necessarily going to the largest cities, which generally have more educational resources than smaller ones. So, in the same way that the association’s first academy in India was not held in the capital, Mumbai, nor Delhi, with populations of approximately 13 million and 11 million, respectively, but held in Chandigarh (population around 1 million), the association’s first symposium in Vietnam was not held in the capital, Ho Chi Minh City (population around 3.5 million), nor Hanoi (population around 1.4 million), but in Danang (population around 750,000).

The title of the symposium was “English Language Innovation, Implementation, and Sustainability,” which was organized with two national partners, the National Foreign Language 2020 Project and the University of Foreign Language Studies, the University of Danang. Another set of key considerations is the speakers, and the association is always careful to blend local, national, and international knowledge, skills, and expertise. This complementary blending can be seen in four of the eight speakers being from some of the top universities in Vietnam, with one speaker from Australia, one from Hong Kong, and two American professors, one of whom is working in England at this time. And in terms of international representation, in addition to most of the participants being from all over Vietnam, there were also attendees from Cambodia and Thailand as well.

University dancers welcoming TESOL Symposium attendees

Yet another essential aspect of creating such successful events, especially when they are happening there for the first time, is our sponsors, who, for the Vietnam event, were National Geographic Learning/Cengage Learning, one of the association’s Strategic Partners, as well as the British Council and Education First, two of our Event Partners. And in terms of what constitutes a “successful event,” the association has been gathering more feedback on the participants’ perspectives on the event, which is one of the most important measures of success, as show by some of the comments written on the end-of-symposium feedback forms completed in Danang:

“The symposium inspires me to change my way of thought about teaching English and I will apply what I’ve learnt to improve my teaching later on.”

“I am going to do reflective journals and action research to maximize the lessons I acquired from the handouts delivered by [the] symposium.”

“I am inspired by the lectures of the speakers. I will try to create my classroom as it should be and design my course more attractive with the help of IT.”

TESOL symposium VIPs, speakers, and moderators

Another way that we’ve been gathering feedback recently is through short video clips, in which attendees at the event share their thoughts about the event, while it’s happening, there and then. Here you can see a 1-minute clip of Sa Chau Vu, one of the attendees, talking about the event. And more photos from the event can be seen on TESOL’s Facebook page. As well as written and spoken feedback, another important indicator of an event’s success is attendance. There were more than 300 attendees at the symposium in Danang—up to 200 of whom lined up, in the pouring rain, to register on-site for the event—on the morning of the first day. That showed a commitment and determination to attend that is rare, and wonderful to see.

As I noted in my blog post “TESOL Goes to India“:

Realizing that many of the ELT professionals in the world cannot attend annual conventions and conferences in person, the association has committed to an international scope. Therefore, through its face-to-face, on-site academies, symposia, and regional conferences all over the world, as well as its online courses and programs, the association is taking TESOL to the world.

Let us know how we can bring TESOL to your world. We look forward to hearing from you.

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