Learning: A Continuous Process

'Learning is a Continuous and Lifelong' process.

A child or adult is constantly in the process of learning. The only difference is that, in children, learning happens unknowingly. Also importantly, for children, learning is a way of life.

In the case of an adult, learning is a deliberate process. For an adult, there is an intention behind learning. Adults tend to learn only what interests or benefits them.

How to Adapt Activities to All Levels

Teaching English in Egypt is one of the most complicated jobs today. It demands broad knowledge of subject matter, curriculum, and standards; enthusiasm, a caring attitude, and a love of learning; knowledge of discipline and classroom management techniques; and a desire to make a difference in the lives of people. 

The two main qualities of a good teacher are enthusiasm and patience.  A teacher needs these two qualities to develop and help his/her students develop. 

 Even an English teacher  with a 'bad' method can get material across to students if he/she has enthusiasm for the subject and doesn't go a pace that suits only a few. A teacher needs to acknowledge that maybe the activity, level, or even  the pace doesn't suit all and needs adjustment/modification.

  

When an English teacher can smpathize with the weakest student then he/she will be successful in really helping his students improve. 

There is so much we have to do to help our students learn. We are always trying to find the best way to help them even if it's not quite following the curriculum. Sometimes, not following the curriculum is not an option for many teachers and for those that do have some flexibility are within certain boundaries.

As for me I think the main features for any teacher: to be skillful,competent(to be able to teach), to be positive, to be an example to motivate your pupils and students!This is what we learned in PCELT. We applied what we learned with elementary level. Some of the activities we learned can be easily adapted to adults others cannot, what do you PCELTers think how can all activities be adapted to all levels.

Writing

The writing process can be epitomized in the following quotes:
 AI believe in miracles in every area of life except writing. The only thing that produces good writing is hard work.   Isac Bashevis Singer.

Any man who keeps working is not a failure. He may not be a great writer, but if he applies the old-fashioned virtues of hard, constant labor, he will eventually make some kind of career for himself as a writer.  Ray Bradbury.

Exercise the writing muscle everyday, even if it is only a letter, notes, a title list, a character sketch, a journal entry, whatever. Writers are like dancers, like athletes. Without that exercise, the muscles seize up.   Jane Yolen.

People on the outside think there is something magical about writing, that they go up in the attic at midnight and cast the bones and come in the morning with a story, but it isn't like that. You sit back on the type writer and you work, and that it is all there is to it.  Harlon Ellison.

Words are a lens to focus one's mind. Ayn Rand.

Writing is its own reward. Henry Miller.

Great is the art of the beginning, but greater is the art of ending. Henry Wadsworth Longfellow.

It is perfectly okay to write garbage- as long as you edit brilliantly. C.J.Cherryh.

Half of my life is an act of revision. John Irving.

Prose is architecture, not interior decoration. Ernest Hemingway.

Dictation: New Methods, New Possibilities

A very interesting book about using dictation in a creative way is Dictation: New Methods, New Possibilities.

The book is full of interesting activities all related to dictation. The is very interesting as it raises teachers' attention to:
Who gives the dictation? To whom?
Who controls the pace?
Who chooses or creates the dictation?


Two interesting activities are the mutual dictation and elicited dictation ( like reading a text on fast food and filling in a chart according to the dictation.)

The dictation can add life to a class that is about to sleep and give students' motivation.

Listening

Listening is a skill that can be developed. A way to make listening interesting is to make it personalized. This can be done through pre- or post- discussion of the listening.

 Decrease the teacher talking time.
Ask instruction checking questions and concept checking questions.

Praise the students for their efforts.

Remember the Pre-, During, and Post- activities.

Heinemann Hits is a very interesting book that gives us a lot of helpful ideas using songs.

You can use the listening as a warm up.

You should prepare the students before the listening.

You can also use the listening while teaching reading or grammar to introduce or enforce what students learned.

You can use the map activity to introduce the students to the place the singer comes from.

Active listening is what we aim at. Give them a sheet of paper to fill in while they are listening to a presentation or a lecture.

There can be more than one recording and they can listen to each other recording.

Students can fill surveys before or after the listening.

Hats Activities

Hats can be used to introduce a number of activities. Hats of fears, hopes, and expectations. It can be used to introduce vocabulary set they need to know.

They can be used to introduce pop up questions or pop up version s of quizzes.

Feedback

On Feedback 

  Feedback is of two types: ego involving (focusing on the person's position in the class), and task involving. Teachers should provide tasks involving feedback instead of ego feedback. Good feedback causes thinking When a student faces a task he makes a choice: to protect him/herself or to engage and grow. If a student protects himself we have to give him feedback that he/she should try the language.  We must always make learning within a class a win-win situation. Every student needs to understand that their progress is as important as the progress of the next student.

If a teacher wants to make a huge impact when giving feedback, a teacher should refrain from giving ego feedback which will only make the students feel good or more elite than the other students.  Instead, teachers are supposed to give task feedback to help the students learn and be better at their task. 

Not giving feedback is better than giving ego feedback.

Remember: 

• Feedback can be interpreted as either based on an activity or on one’s sense of self-worth.
•    Feedback is an important factor in progress.
•   Grade comparisons can effect confidence.

 

Feedback also involves:

• Purpose and Forms of Assessment
•  Measuring student’s learning and progress.
• Improving teaching strategies.
• Improving the quality of teaching programs. 
• Raising students' achievement. 
•  Reporting on students' progress.
•  Encouraging intrinsic student motivation with feedback. 
• Raising students' awareness of their progress.

Situations and experiences That Threaten Students' Learning

The kinds of situations and experiences (internal and external) that potentially threaten students and their capacity to learn:

•  Not interested in subject
•  Don't like the teacher
•  Doesn’t / didn’t understand something
• Doesn’t understand for what purpose this subject is necessary and if it will be useful in pupil’s current or future life
•  Have some personal problems (e.g. with peers, at home etc.)
•  Too distractive environment (especially with mobile phones and at university, with notebooks too). This can seriously hamper the learning process.

Matching Cards

Print in special paper and cut the cards. Students have to match the card with the image and the word. As an extra activity, you can ask students to make up sentences or start up a discussion related to the activity. Many ESL websites matching card games and you can create your own.

Lining Up

Lining up can be used as break ing ice activities or as teaching snaps.

Procedure: Ask the students to stand up, line up, and face the person in front of them.

Ask them to ask their partners about a specific thing, food preferences, for example.

Then students are asked to move three places in the line and are asked to tell their new partners about the food preferences of their previous partners.

A variation of moving three places is mingling.

Polls for Icebreakers

Memory Games

Memory games are a good way to recycle vocabulary, revise materials and energize the class. Besides being an energizing activity, it really helps students memorize as the cards act as visual aids. In typical memory games, students can be asked to pick up the matching pictures.

Procedure:
Put all of the first group of words together shuffled and face down on the floor. The second group of paper are written on different colored papers and also put on the ground.

The students match them up. Remember the level of the students, whether they are elementary, pre- intermediate,
Upper-intermediate or advanced. Memory games can be adapted to suit all levels.

Playing Sick

Playing sick is a nice warm up. write an illness and a piece of advice. Illnesses and sicknesses are shuffled. Students mime or act the illness and the partner says the advice in his paper which sis most of the time irrelevant.

Students have to mingle the right illness with the right piece of advice.

Impressive Quote

The question is not so much " How can I teach?" as it is
'' How can I help these people learn?"

General-Spacific-General

Remember how students listen depends on why they listen.

In listening and reading we move from general to specific to general.

Listening is actively making meaning from verbal input.

Listening involves:
Peoples' mood, word stress, intonation, formality, informality, understanding, background knowledge, reason to listen, and response.


Listening also involves:
Getting clues from facial expressions and gestures.
Pronunciation
Vocabulary
Stress
Intonation
Using background knowledge about the setting and topic.

A good listening lesson:
Prepares students for the listening.
Uses a topic of interest or value to the students.
Uses pictures to activate background knowledge.
Brainstorm what students know.
Prediction through hints.
Show realia related to the topic.

Exercises may involve:
Listening for specific words auditory discrimination.
Filling out a form or a grid.
Taking notes.
Discussing personal opinion.
Having a debate.
Writing about a personal opinion related to the topic.
Doing a role play.

In order to develop their listening skills keep the PDP framework in mind.

Enhancing Reading Skills

Reading is not automatic, and students really require support in order to learn how to read effectively and acquire reading skills.

A language-rich environment forms a solid foundation on which reading skills are founded. Reading skills include: decoding, fluency, vocabulary and comprehension.

Improving one's reading skills will reduce unnecessary reading time and enable one to reading in more focused manner, increase one's level of understanding, and help one read effectively.

Scanning: reading quickly a specific part for detail. Though read quickly, it is done word for word.

Skimming: read quickly for general meaning.

Detailed Reading: Once the students got an idea about the text, they can begin to read for detail.

Underline and highlight: To pick up central ideas and vocabulary.

Record Keywords.

Answer questions of information or opinion or both.

Write summaries.

Icing on the cake activities

Icing on the cake activities are extra enhancement or additional benefit. These are activities that are done to recap, integrate the skills, access or as teaching snaps.

Running Dictation

Running dictation is an activity used to energize the students, get them out of their seats and move around. It is a way to recap vocabulary, grammar, word or sentence order, and practice listening or speaking.

Choose a short passage or dialogue and make several copies. Stick these on the walls or may be on the walls or maybe in the corridor or out of the class.

Put the students in pairs or in groups. One student runs and read the passage and comes and dictates the rest. Then they swap roles. In several turns they will build the whole passage.

The dictation can follow strictly what is in the passage or revolve around main ideas if I aim at teaching reading.

Picture Dictation

I was introduced to a very interesting activity namely picture dictation. It is a very interesting exercise that can be used as a warm up or as a teaching snap. It is suitable to all classes especially large classes. It is suitable for youngsters and teen students.

You may need to model or draw on the board to give the students an idea about what they are going to do.

Make sure you give students time to draw what you dictate before you move to the other step.

Students may color after class as an extension activity.

You can give students a list of objects to draw from to add up an element of creativity.

Students can swap the papers and compare their pictures. This adds up a speaking element.

Reflective Practices

 Reflective practice is the capacity to reflect on action so as to engage in a process of continuous learning. A key rationale for reflective practice is that experience alone does not necessarily lead to learning; deliberate reflection on experience is essential.

Reflective practice can be an important tool in practice-based professional learning settings where people learn from their own professional experiences, rather than from formal learning or knowledge transfer. It may be the most important source of personal professional development and improvement. It is also an important way to bring together theory and practice; through reflection a person is able to see and label forms of thought and theory within the context of his or her work. A person who reflects throughout his or her practice is not just looking back on past actions and events, but is taking a conscious look at emotions, experiences, actions, and responses, and using that information to add to his or her existing knowledge base and reach a higher level of understanding.

Donald Schön's 1983 book The Reflective Practitioner introduced concepts such as reflection-on-action and reflection-in-action which explain how professionals meet the challenges of their work through both in and on practices

The concepts underlying reflective practice are much older. Earlier in the 20th century, John Dewey was among the first to write about reflective practice with his exploration of experience, interaction and reflection. Researchers such as Kurt Lewin and Jean Piaget were developing relevant theories of human learning and development.

Central to the development of reflective theory was interest in the integration of theory and practice, the cyclic pattern of experience and the conscious application of lessons learned from experience. Since the 1970s, there has been a growing literature and focus around experiential learning and the development and application of reflective practice.