TEACHING PRACTICE RECONSIDERED: TARTU ANNELINNA GYMNASIUM PROJECT Natalja Zagura, Ülle Türk

TEACHING PRACTICE RECONSIDERED: TARTU ANNELINNA GYMNASIUM PROJECT

Natalja Zagura, Ülle Türk Department of English Studies, University of Tartu

The English language seems to be everywhere, and, in most people’s minds, young people “catch” it merely by being exposed to the language through pop culture, social media and computer games. The reality, however, is somewhat different. Though many young people do acquire spoken English fairly easily through the out-of-school use of the language, there are others whose contact with English is mostly limited to the school context and who see this language just as a school subject, not as a means of communication.

This problem of students having surprisingly little contact with the English language and limited motivation to study it came to our attention when visiting Tartu Annelinna Gymnasium, a school where most students’ first language is other than Estonian and where the Estonian language immersion programme has been used successfully for years. It is certainly understandable that with the focus on mastering Estonian, while also developing their Russian language skills, students might find it cognitively difficult to engage with yet another language. Nevertheless, having discussed the problem with the teachers of English, who struggle to improve their students’ language skills, we could see that, partly at least, the problem lies in students’ lack of an urgent need to study English as they do not see its immediate usefulness for them.

It was hypothesised that students’ learning outcomes would improve if they were made aware why it is useful for them to be good at English, how to study the language more effectively and what use could be made of the English language skills outside the school context. To test the hypothesis, it was decided to develop a special elective course for tenth graders, as they would benefit most from some guidance and motivation for studying English, which would hopefully improve their practices and performance during the three-year period of studies at secondary school.

To put this idea into practice, the Department of English Studies of the University of Tartu decided to cooperate with Tartu Annelinna Gymnasium and to apply for funding from the European Structural Fund programme geared to language learning for success in the labour market (Euroopa Liidu Struktuuritoetus). The project was set up in the summer of 2017. Within the two-year project, eight MA students of the Teacher of Foreign Languages programme would design a 35-hour conversational English course, develop materials and activities for it and teach it to tenth-grade students of Tartu Annelinna Gymnasium. Below, the course design process (focussing on the needs analysis), the course content and the most popular activities as well as the lessons learnt will be discussed. We share this information in the hope that our experience could inspire other teachers of English who experience similar problems with their students to supplement their courses with motivating materials and activities.

The conversational English course is meant to supplement the compulsory course of English and

its main objectives are to increase students’ motivation for learning English, encourage them to use English more actively outside the school context, introduce various opportunities for language practice as well as make the learners more aware of the possible techniques for language learning. In short, the aim is to help students realise that English is an important means of communication, not just a school subject, and encourage them to use the language for communicative purposes.

However, the students taking the course are not the only ones benefitting from the project. The MA students involved get an opportunity to design and conduct a course as well as analyse its effectiveness. This gives them a unique opportunity to experience the course development and delivery process from the beginning to the very end, something that the standard ten-week teaching practice that forms part of the teacher education programme does not allow.

The course design process started in the autumn of the academic year of 2017–2018. The four MA students, guided by the university instructors, first compiled a preliminary syllabus and then conducted a needs analysis using a short questionnaire and face-to-face interviews with the students of Grade 10. Taking into account the responses of the students, the course syllabus was modified and the course materials designed. The course was taught for the first time in January – April 2018 to two groups of tenth graders, 31 students in all. A university instructor was present at the majority of the lessons to give student teachers feedback on their work and advice for further improvement. At the end of the course, student feedback was collected and the effectiveness of the course evaluated. This resulted in suggestions for modifications to the course syllabus and materials.

In the second year of the project, another team of four MA students taught an upgraded version of the course to two more groups of 10 th -graders, 41 students this time, as students’ interest in this elective course had increased. Before the course was taught, the initial team met the new team of four MA students to discuss their experiences and the modifications that could be introduced in order to make the course even more useful and motivating for the target audience. Then the second team upgraded the study materials, conducted the course in January – April 2019 and, at the end of the course, collected feedback from tenth graders and evaluated the improved version of the course. Such a systematic approach has proved to be successful and provided a good basis for the continuing course development and teaching by new teams of student teachers of English.

As one of the main purposes of the course was to increase the students’ motivation for learning English by providing them with the activities and topics they might find interesting, it was decided to first establish what their subjective needs as well as strengths and weaknesses are. For that purpose, the MA students designed a questionnaire (available at http://bit.ly/qqq2017) and asked all the students who had registered for the course to fill it in online. This was followed by group interviews conducted in English. The latter gave the MA students also some idea of the students’ level of spoken English as their language competence was not formally tested.

Although by the end of the basic school students are expected to reach level B1 in English, seven students out of the 26 who filled in the questionnaire thought they were at level A2 in spoken interaction, spoken production and writing, and two at level A1 in all five skills (see Figure 1). These results show that the students are quite critical of their English language skills as even those

whose English was indeed below the average could cope better than a student at level A1 would. Not surprisingly, the students thought they were better at reading and listening skills and worse at the productive skills as they had had few opportunities to use the language productively outside the classroom.

When asked about the aspects of learning and using English that they find challenging, the students often answered that grammar is difficult because they cannot remember and apply all the rules. The most challenging aspect, however, turned out to be listening, with students explaining that at school lessons they do not practise listening as often as they would like to and in listening activities people tend to speak too fast and “swallow” some words. Interestingly, speaking and writing were mentioned considerably less often as problematic aspects.

The questionnaire confirmed our initial opinion that the students do not use English outside school as extensively as they could. As Figure 2 indicates, only half of the students mentioned surfing the Internet and watching films, which were the two most popular contexts after school. The other more popular contexts included travelling (mentioned by 42 per cent), and computer games, reading books and communicating with friends (all mentioned by about a third of the students). Using English in the social media was mentioned by a quarter of the respondents, which is not surprising, because students mostly use the Russian language and Russian-based platforms ВКонтакте and Odnoklassniki for communicating with friends. Five students out of twenty-six mentioned attending additional lessons of English in their spare time – a tendency quite common among Russian-speaking students. The use of private tutors probably reflects the parents’ belief that a larger amount of formal instruction would improve their children’s language skills.

Figure 2: Where do you use English in your everyday life?

The students were also asked how they would learn English if they had a choice (see Figure 3). It was surprising to see that 73 per cent of the respondents claimed reading to be their preferred way of learning, with communication (either face-to-face or through the social media) only the second most

popular answer with 65 per cent of the respondents suggesting this option. Approximately half of the respondents also considered grammar exercises, writing, listening and watching films as desirable language learning activities. It can be assumed that the answers were influenced by the respondents’ previous experience of learning English and the activities that they were familiar with, not by their actual personal preferences. In fact, when the course started, the students were not very eager to read longer texts or complete writing activities.

The needs analysis findings confirmed our initial concern that some students do not see much need for using English outside school and are not aware of what they themselves could do to develop their language skills. Therefore, it was decided that the importance of good English skills will be addressed repeatedly during the course and that attempts will be made to raise the students’ awareness of effective study skills.

Taking into account the students’ preferences for the issues to be included in this elective course, the following list of topics was created, with the aim of dedicating two to four academic hours to each:

1. 2. 3. 4. 5. 6. 7. 8. 9. 10. 11. 12. 13. Introduction to ourselves and the course Learning styles, time management Media in the English-speaking world, critical reading Social media Cultural norms and differences British (pop)culture American (pop)culture Environment, ecological footprint Health and healthy lifestyle Visiting the University of Tartu, further studies, university life Work life, career Meeting foreign exchange students Travelling

The feedback from the two cohorts of students who have taken the course so far has been positive. The students have enjoyed the topics of British and American (pop)culture and healthy lifestyle the most, though the issues related to further studies and work life were also considered motivating. Quite a number of the students were interested in learning more effective study skills and time management techniques.

Of the various activities in the course, the one that practically all the participants loved was meeting some foreign exchange students studying at the University of Tartu. The exchange students came to the school and the tenth-graders first interviewed them in small groups and then showed them around their school. All the communication was in English and the tenth graders could experience how successful they were at speaking the language and how confident they felt in a situation where English is the only common language. The foreign exchange students, in their turn, were excited to see a local school and talk to young people. We could see that bringing English-speaking guests to an English classroom can be an enriching practice if the occasion is well planned and suitable activities are selected.

Another activity that proved to be highly popular with the course participants was creating podcasts or videos. Students worked in groups of three or four and created a 5–10-minute podcast or video on the topic of their own choice. As an introduction to the task, the students watched and analysed posts of several YouTubers and discussed technical solutions for podcasts and videos. It was impressive to see how good some school students are at using various tools for editing videos and how creative and humorous videos they produced.

A selection of materials developed by the two teams of MA students – future teachers of English – are available at http://bit.ly/TAGmaterials. These are the activities that were tested during the conversational English course and that seemed to appeal to the students of grade ten. They are mostly pair- and group-work activities, but include a couple of individual reading and writing activities as well. We do hope that other teachers of English might find some interesting ideas that they can integrate into their own English lessons among them.

What the tenth-graders especially liked about the elective course, however, was the fact that the teachers were young people, almost their peers and, as a result, the atmosphere in the classroom was somewhat more informal and less stressful than usual. This was exactly what the shyer students needed to start talking more freely. The fact that more students applied to take the course in the second year of the project than in the first year is an indication that the experience was considered positive overall.

Similarly, the MA students who have been teaching the course have found the experience useful and enjoyable. Some of them have mentioned that it has convinced them that they have chosen the right profession, and all of them have appreciated the opportunity to teach a course where they are responsible for all stages and aspects. As they have taught the course in pairs, they have enhanced their collaboration skills, and most of them have been positively surprised by the good rapport they managed to establish with the students.

The areas that have caused difficulties have been engaging all the students, particularly the shy ones, in pair- and group-work activities and ensuring that the students keep to the deadlines with major homework activities. The greatest challenge has been to strike the right balance between the teacher and the students talking time. It is obvious that even in a conversation class some input is needed, otherwise there is nothing for students to talk about. The issue is, however, who should provide this input so that the participants do not become passive observers. In the first year of the project, this caused some difficulty as presentations by the MA students took up too much of the class time, which was also pointed out in the student feedback. We learned from the experience and in the second year less time was devoted to teacher presentations, which left more time for students to talk.

To conclude, though the two-year project has ended, the cooperation between Annelinna Gymnasium and our department continues. This academic year, a third group of MA students upgraded, taught and evaluated the course and were as enthusiastic as the previous groups about the experience. The student feedback collected was even more positive than in the previous years. The school leadership sees the course as a useful supplement to the compulsory courses of English; it has expressed the wish that the course be taught every year, and it has been added into the list of elective courses recommended to the tenth-graders of Tartu Annelinna Gymnasium. Thus, we hope that this mutually beneficial endeavour will continue and our MA students will have the opportunity to teach the course that has been designed and make use of the activities developed as an alternative to the more traditional teaching practice in the future as well.

REFERENCES

Euroopa Liidu Struktuuritoetus. Keeleõppetegevused edukamaks toimetulekuks tööturul. Available at https://www.struktuurifondid.ee/et/uudised/innove-avas-taotlusvooru-keeleoppetegevusededukamaks-toimetulekuks-tooturul, accessed 25 May 2018.