Mindmap on Strategies

OP#2: Video task

The goal of teaching strategies in the classroom is to create autonomous learners, who can learn by themselves in and outside school. To facilitate learning for students of all ages there are many language learning strategies to consider. Successful learners, in general, tend to select strategies that work for them depending on the requirements of the task. These learners can certainly tell what strategies they use and why they work so well for them instead of others. Nevertheless, what happens with those students who do not have the capacity to select strategies and apply those which are effective for them?

In this particular case the teacher must be the one offering and teaching different strategies for the different types of learners there might be in a classroom. In the video, the teacher offers a wide range of strategies for students to pick the one that best suits them. Undoubtedly, any type of strategy showed in class must be a reflection of the students’ needs, challenges and strengths. For this reason she uses language specific skills such as knowing how to use English in any area (speaking, reading, writing, and listening); then, cognition and meta-cognition is reflected in the schema-activation, the transfer of knowledge, self-reflection. Affective factors are surely a key factor since we are dealing with motivation, confidence and a trusting atmosphere which can encourage learners’ participation and risk-taking in the class.

If I had to transfer some of the strategies showed in the video to my groups of learners, I would say that all are very useful. In my case, I have all range of ages (from young learners to adults). Thus, if I had to select the most effective ones for some specific groups and ages, I think I would definitely use transfer of knowledge, teaching to others, schema-activation and self-reflection. For instance, teaching to others could be effective if those high-level students could teach the weak ones in the class, just by giving them a hand on certain aspects of grammar or structures in writing. This way both the strong and the weak student would improve some of the weakest aspects.

With young learners schema-activation is quite significant because going from what they already know to the unknown makes a great impact on their learning process, while being unnoticed sometimes. For adolescents and young adults self-reflection strategies are also great because they can develop their autonomous and reflective skills, which are meaningful for adult lives. By transferring part of their knowledge they can also see or identify patterns of grammar as well.

Needless to say, the teacher should always provide affective strategies as well. Motivation and giving them the confidence to keep working and improving should be always present in the class in any task. By doing this we create a trusting atmosphere which encourage them to takes risks and to participate actively and communicatively. 

Grid Concepts

Concept	Definition	Source
Translanguaging	The use of two languages in the classroom as “the linguistic resources of the child to maximise understanding and achievement. Both languages are used in a dynamic and integrated manner”. It is an intentional and planned two-language usage. It is flexible and enables learning through more than one language.	Lewis, Gwyn; Jones, Bryn; Baker, Colin. 2012. “Translanguaging: Developing its Conceptualisation and Contextualisation”. Educational Research and Evaluation: and International Journal on Theory and Practice, Vol. 18:7, 655.
Diglossia	The different uses and functions that two languages receive by a bilingual speaker.	Lewis, Gwyn; Jones, Bryn; Baker, Colin. 2012. “Translanguaging: Developing its Conceptualisation and Contextualisation”. Educational Research and Evaluation: and International Journal on Theory and Practice, Vol. 18:7, 656
Code-switching	It is a bilingual mode in which both L1 and L2 are used simultaneously. It is a creative strategy by the speaker and sometimes a scaffolding technique in bilingual classrooms. It has associations with language separation.	Lewis, Gwyn; Jones, Bryn; Baker, Colin. 2012. “Translanguaging: Developing its Conceptualisation and Contextualisation”. Educational Research and Evaluation: and International Journal on Theory and Practice, Vol. 18:7, 657-658
Monolingual	Non-bilingual speaker	Swain, Merrill; Kirkpatrick, Andy; Cummins, Jim. 2001. “How to have a Guilt-Free Life using Cantonese in the English Class”. A Handbook for the English Language Teacher in Hong Kong, Vol (?), 3
Lingua franca	English as such refers to the “common language of communication by bilingual and multilingual people for whom English is not a first language. The great majority of communication in English is between people who come from non-English backgrounds”.	Swain, Merrill; Kirkpatrick, Andy; Cummins, Jim. 2001. “How to have a Guilt-Free Life using Cantonese in the English Class”. A Handbook for the English Language Teacher in Hong Kong, Vol (?), 7
Cross-linguistic	Term to describe the way two different language systems interact in the mind of a speaker or learner so as to understand better the patterns or rules by comparing and contrasting.	Swain, Merrill; Kirkpatrick, Andy; Cummins, Jim. 2001. “How to have a Guilt-Free Life using Cantonese in the English Class”. A Handbook for the English Language Teacher in Hong Kong, Vol (?), 12
Strategy	Sometimes associated with the terms “techniques”, “tactics” or “learning behaviours”. It is basically the techniques or tools which a learner might use to acquire or understand new content. They can be classified into 6 categories: memory strategies, cognitive strategies, compensation strategies, metacognitive strategies, affective strategies, and social strategies.	Griffiths, Carol. 2004. Language Learning Strategies: Theory and Research. Vol (?), 1-4
Interlanguage	“The intermediate system created while the learner is trying to come to terms with the target language […] errors as evidence of positive efforts by the student to learn the new language.”	Griffiths, Carol. 2004. Language Learning Strategies: Theory and Research. Vol (?), 7
Acquisition-Learning Hypothesis	It is what Krashen coined for the conscious learning to develop a language (ineffectively).	Griffiths, Carol. 2004. Language Learning Strategies: Theory and Research. Vol (?), 8
Natural Order Hypothesis	This idea states that learning stages or features of a language have a natural order for a student to acquire them.	Griffiths, Carol. 2004. Language Learning Strategies: Theory and Research. Vol (?), 8
The Monitor Hypothesis	In plain words, it is what we call when the system learnt monitors or edits the output of the learner of the previously acquired system.	Griffiths, Carol. 2004. Language Learning Strategies: Theory and Research. Vol (?), 8
The Input Hypothesis	“language is acquired by understanding input which is a little beyond the current level of competence or comprehensible input”.	Griffiths, Carol. 2004. Language Learning Strategies: Theory and Research. Vol (?), 8
Affective Filter Hypothesis	“a learner’s emotions and attitudes can act as a filter which slows down the acquisition of language. When the affective is high it can block language development”.	Griffiths, Carol. 2004. Language Learning Strategies: Theory and Research. Vol (?), 8
Communicative Competence	It is the ability or skill that a speaker has to use language in order to deliver and interpret messages and pieces of information.	Griffiths, Carol. 2004. Language Learning Strategies: Theory and Research. Vol (?), 9

Self-reflection on Strategies

While watching the videos I realised that nothing is impossible if you have enough motivation and if you find your strategy to achieve your goal. It is impressive that a teenager is able to speak 15 languages; I even think just 5 or 6 are impressive, too. The question lays on what strategies to use and how someone can find them out.

I remember when I was a kid and I had to study a unit for history class. Teachers had always taught us to underline everything we found important. My problem was that I found everything to be important. So, I underlined almost everything with my pencil and my ruler. However, my problem was what to do once I had everything marked. How would an 8-year-old girl study or learn something so as to remember the day of the exam? And I say remember because that is what they taught us, to remember and to “vomit”. Would not it be better to make students understand things? To teach them a great range of strategies so as to let them choose what best suits them? I think this way we would be half-way on the right track. It would definitely reduce the number of drop-outs in schooling. If teachers, parents, educators and governments offered different ways of learning about things, there would not be such an amount of frustrated and demotivated kids who lose their interest on education.

Strategies should be something taught at school, as another subject on the curriculum. They should be aware of the possibilities they have to learn about anything: history, maths, cultures, art and so on. Due to the mixed-abilities classrooms we face it is imperative to have our students motivated and interested by showing to them that there is not just one way of doing things, they just have to find their own way. Students should be taught in terms of social-affective strategies for instance. We must not have young learners who seem to have lost their path in education because they just “do not fit” in the system. Certainly what they need is the system to be adapted to them. 

First questions - Introduction

1.   What is a strategy?

If we interpret a “strategy” from the point of view of a learner, I would say that it refers to all the activities the student does so as to acquire knowledge or understand new content. However, if we talk from a teacher’s perspective, I think it has to do with the activities or methodologies they use to get their students successfully into a task.

2.   What are strategies mainly used for?

They are tools that learners and teacher have that they know will work effectively and will help them to achieve a goal, for instance to learn new vocabulary or to motivate students into a reading task.

3.   Do you use any language learning strategies? If so, which ones?

As a student I used to read page by page of a unit and then I would write a summary with the main information, or if the unit was not so thick I used to create a mind-map. Sometimes it was very helpful to explain others what I had learnt, for example my parents or my own classmates. This way I made sure that I had understood and embraced what I had read.

4.   What language teaching strategies are you familiar with?

I do not really remember the name of any but I guess that each teacher has its own “tricks” or techniques for a class. For example, in my case I have students who never remember that “people” is plural and so they always write “people is”. I once told them that they could associate the sound of “bipolar” in Spanish to remember “people are”.

5.   Are the kinds of strategies mentioned above different from communication strategies? If so, in what ways?

I think there is a difference between communication and language teaching/learning strategies. Communicative strategies are based on getting someone’s message across, for instance using gestures or faces to achieve it. 

Scaffolding

SCAFFOLDING READING EXPERIENCES FOR MULTILINGUAL CLASSROOMS (SRE)

 by Michael F. Graves and Jill Fitzgerald

Chapter 5

The article starts by stating that thousands of teachers in the US and other countries teach in classes where students have different language background, language skills, and different reading proficiency. We find this diversity even more when we teach a multilingual class.  The approach described in the article addresses only to one aspect of reading instruction. What is important is for children to have a successful reading experience. According to Graves and Fitzgerald “it is important that children understand what they read, enjoy the experience of reading, learn from what they read” (2002:96)*.

In this particular chapter, it is discussed one approach to assisting students in multilingual classrooms to read, understand, learn from and enjoy, that is, the scaffolding experience. This term was first used by Wood, Bruner, and Ros (1976) to characterise mothers’ verbal interaction when reading to their young children.  It basically consists of a process that enables the child to solve a problem or task, or even achieve a goal, which could be beyond his/her capability. Of course, it is a temporary support which enables the accomplishment of a task.

There are 3 attributes which are highly related to the scaffolding technique:

•          The scaffold itself: the temporary and supportive structure.
•          Vygotsky’s term (1978): Zone of Proximal Development.
•       Teachers must gradually dismantle their support and transfer the responsibility to complete tasks to the student. It is through this gradual process that students become more competent and independent learners.

In the SRE framework we find 4 main factors to bear in mind: the characteristics of the learner, the nature of the materials, the learning activities, and the criterial tasks. We also find two different phases – the planning and the implementation –. The planning phase consists of the creation of a particular situation with a particular reading experience. It must take into account the students, the reading selection, and the reading purpose.

The implementation phase compiles a set of pre-reading, during-reading, and post-reading activities. The pre-reading tasks serve to get students interested in the topic, to remind them of things they already know, or basically pre-teaching new content, such as vocabulary or expressions. These activities are really important, especially for those whose L1 is not English and might not be familiar with certain topics. The during-activities serve to make them focus on particular pieces of information. And finally, the post-activities they provide opportunities for students to synthesize and organize information learned from reading a text and to recall and understand important details.

Here we find a list with possible activities for each group:

As a conclusion, scaffolding is a kind of lesson plan that relies heavily on the concept of scaffolding –having a temporary, supportive figure in the learning process –. The reading experience must be successful and rewarding. The goal of scaffolding is for students to become independent and lifelong readers. 

*Graves, M. F., & Fitzgerald, J. (2002). Scaffolding Reading Experiences for Multilingual Classrooms. In Garcia, G. G. (Ed.), English Learners: Reaching the Highest Level of English Literacy (pp. 96-104). Newark: International Reading Association.

COMPULSORY TASK #1: Exploring my reading experience: learner and teacher

When I was at high school reading adapted short books was basically part of the evaluation. Students were required to read them in order to have a final quiz where they would be asked about the content. Back then I imagined they did it because they wanted to check how good we were in reading comprehension and in producing such answers. Of course, given the fact that this was not a voluntary task, most people did not get to finish the book or even get started. They found the task to be quite boring and meaningless.

Personally, I did not find the activity to be that boring, quite the opposite. I realised that I understood more words and expressions than I expected, and that I learned loads of vocabulary. Perhaps the challenging part was that of producing my own answers in the quiz.

Now, as a teacher, I do not use any adapted novels. I incorporate the reading competence into class by having an activity behind. That is, if my students are about to face a reading activity, there must be a meaningful task waiting for them after that. For instance, let’s take a class of 8-9-year-old students. Imagine that they are reading something on tigers. In this reading they have information such as, where they live, what qualities they have (fast, dangerous…), physical appearance (big tail, sharp teeth…), and what they feed from.

If the reading has a catchy title or a nice picture, I tend to introduce first the topic by asking them what they can see in the picture or what the story could be about just by reading the title. We will try to read paragraph by paragraph and I will make them questions just to check if they followed without problems. Meanwhile they should have underlined those words new for them, which will be later explained.

The idea is that the reading leads to the main task, which could be a mini project on their favourite animal. They should write about one animal they like and should include, more or less, the content they have seen in the previous reading. Obviously, the task must be realistic, meaning that we should plan an activity which can be fulfilled by a 9-year-old student without big difficulties. As an alternative, we could have our students presenting their project to the rest of the class, once they have produced the text where they expose their information.

Honestly, I have never thought of reading comprehension being an innovative strategy for teaching EFL. However, I do think that it is a competence that must be trained no matter what. There is a big difference reading by pleasure and reading with a language purpose. I guess the challenge is to conceal them both in the same objective.