Especially if you teach upper-primary classes. Grzegorz Śpiewak
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his is the third article devoted to upper-primary school students and their English teachers, in the Macmillan Activators 2012 series. Why so much interest, you might wonder? Well, in our firm belief it is in the upper-primary sector that the learner’s educational future is decided, for better or worse. Psychologically speaking, the transition from the relatively safe and learner-friendly world of integrated teaching in lower primary years into the demanding reality of many distinct content subjects in grade 4 is very often the cut-off point beyond which one is either classified as either a good student or a poor one. This is what Kiński & Łagun had in mind when arguing for making that transition as smooth as possible, particularly when it comes to the foreign language1.
Grzegorz Śpiewak Teacher, teacher trainer, EFL project manager, adviser and author. Currently affiliated with New School, New York. Head ELT Consultant for Macmillan Polska. President of DOSTeacher Training Solutions. Former president of IATEFL Poland, now on its Honorary Committee.
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Listen carefully – and read on!
Speaking of transition and foreign language, the onset of educational stage II is also a critical moment for the child’s linguistic experience. It is the beginning of ‘serious’ language study, with achievement targets defined a lot more strictly than it was the case during the former three years. And yet, given virtually everything we know about the way that linguistic competence in L2 actually develops, it is a slow process, one that in an important sense is at odds with frequent, achievement-oriented testing. The latter crucially – and wrongly! – presupposes
a nearly identical pace of progress for every student in a group, which both the modern science of learning and pedagogical common sense must reject as completely unrealistic. L2 grammar as well as other facets of the linguistic system emerge gradually, at uneven intervals or progress increments for different learners. Arguably, one of the key tasks of a conscientious language teacher, particularly at the outset of grade 4 and in subsequent months if not years, is to make his or her methodology align with this emergent nature of linguistic competence. This is what Karolina Kotorowicz argued for very forcefully in her contribution to this article series a few months ago2.
1 Jacek Łagun & Czesław Kiński, ‘On functionalkinaesthetic evolution for 4th graders”, The Teacher 5/2012.
2 Karolina Kotorowicz-Jasińska, ‘Let it evolve! Teaching grammar effectively in the upper-primary classroom”, The Teacher 8/2012.
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Is there anything left to say, the reader could ask? Indeed, it seems as if - with the two articles alluded to above - the basic conceptual territory has been mapped out already. And yet there is something that merits one more look: it is in a sense an intersection of the earlier two. If we accept that the transition to serious (foreign language) study should indeed be made as smooth as possible, and that linguistic knowledge needs to emerge slowly, surely the logical implication is that we need to rethink our practical teaching priorities when it comes to language skills selection and their relative importance throughout the programme. That’s where this article comes in. Below I shall argue that a pedagogically sensible, upper-primarylearner-friendly approach to teaching foreign language skills should secure an equally smooth transition and allow for slow, gradual emergence of the relevant language abilities.
Incidentally, receptive skills, especially listening, are also heavily featured in standard international exams like Cambridge ESOL Young Learners Examination.So if you are looking for extra materials at the approximate level of difficulty, it is probably a good idea to look up YLE practice materials at the ‘Movers’ level4.
All language skills are equal but …
Sounds right!
… some are arguably “more equal” than others. I am not trying to show off here with a literary reference, but rather suggest that there are good reasons to focus on some of the skills in particular. Given the title of this article, it will hardly come as a surprise to the reader that my recommendation is to concentrate on receptive skills rather than productive ones. And of the former, on listening rather than reading. The justification? Well, one is the upcoming endof-school exam in the upper-primary sector (the so-called “Sprawdzian 6-klasisty”). While there is no detailed information available at the time of writing this piece, on the exact form and task selection of this test, it is fairly clear that receptive skills are going to take up a large proportion of the test items. A good hint is the New Core Curriculum with its effort to secure continuity of foreign language learning, which entails [a] stabilizing common teaching priorities throughout subsequent educational sectors, and [b] harmonizing formal assessment. So, let us take a look at the existing final exam for the lower-secondary sector. At its basic level as much as 60% of all the points available are allocated to listening and reading comprehension (dropping only slightly, to 50% at the extended level). This suggests very strongly that listening and reading comprehension will allow 6-grades to scoop up most of the points, too. Not least because they are a lot easier to test than speaking or writing – for linguistic as well as economic reasons3.
Speaking of exposure, it hardly merits a lot of arguing for that learners will particularly benefit from a great amount of graded, level- and agerelevant spoken input. For one thing, every language learner will agree that listening is generally more difficult than reading, in that it has to happen in ‘real time’, with the learner facing a stream of foreign sounds that need to be heard, decoded, and subsequently interpreted all at the same time. No doubt a complex skill, which is reflected in the relatively wide range of listening exercise types and exam task types. Last but not least, listening effectively is the foundation of successful speaking, starting with recognizing and imitating individual foreign language sounds. The latter, incidentally, is one good reason to weave in a lot of pronunciation work into any sensible listening-speaking programme and seek out every opportunity to do punctual, focused sound recognition exercises, such as this one:
3 It is worth noting that neither writing nor speaking are tested at the final English exam in Gimnazjum at basic level. If so, it is inconceivable that resources could be allocated to do so at a lower level, i.e. at the end of the upper-primary sector.
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Apart from the above ‘strategic’ considerations, we should also acknowledge that, even though undoubtedly highly desirable, productive skills develop a lot more slowly than receptive ones. So if we wish to support a smooth transition from lower to upper primary language learning, it is commonsensical in fact to do so by giving our learners a lot of opportunity for high quality exposure rather than insist on immediate language production.
Source: Evolution 1 Student’s Book, p. 86, Macmillan Education 2012. 4 One example of such materials is Young Learners English Movers. Practice Tests, Macmillan Education 2011.
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Sounds smooth
Source: Evolution 1 Student’s Book, p. 86, Macmillan Education 2012.
To my mind, such coursebook material should never be seen as optional extra, as something that will fill the extra few minutes we might have before the bell rings. On the contrary, its role is vital as an awareness raising moment. In fact any list of sounds, words or short phrases is an invitation to do any number of fun activities, including: Deciding whether the two (or more) sounds are same or different Picking an odd-man out from a set Teasing out minimal pairs (possibly with the help of word cards or flashcards) Sound recognition without sound – based on observing teacher’s lip shapes only (the ‘lip sync’ technique) Playing sound bingo games. Once we care to look, sounds are virtually everywhere, all words have sounds, including letters of the alphabet! This can be exploited in the form of all kinds of listening puzzles, which kids are bound to respond to with enthusiasm:
Source: Evolution 1 Student’s Book, p. 12, Macmillan Education 2012.
The more varied and the more frequent, the better. And not just as an ear-sharpening exercise, but also as a class management tool: these exercises are great as pace changers, or as warmer-ups for the first 3 minutes of your class, when kids are not yet in the mood to do any English, having spent the past 10 minutes chasing one another around the school.
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Above I have argued for using skills work as an instrument of smooth transition into upper-primary learning. To achieve this, we need not just a great collection of listening exercises, but a solid, learnerfriendly methodology to administer them. Here are a few things to keep in mind: Time & timing: the length of a listening passage is a crucial factor. Anyone can cope with up to 30 seconds of spoken text, 1 minute-recording is fairly long, and anything over 2 minutes is way too long for most lower level learners5! If you are dealing with long(ish) recordings, make sure you don’t ‘lose’ your learners: a good teacher will pause if needed and help with one segment of the text before moving on to the next one. Number of attempts: who said we always need to play it twice? Why not 3, 4, 5 times, or basically as many times as they need (which means it could sometimes be once, too…)?! The terror of always insisting on strictly two attempts is characteristic of testing listening rather than teaching it. Particularly with younger learners like your 4th graders, you will remove a lot of pressure once they know you are there to give them an extra chance. Preparation: in real life, we hardly ever come to an act of listening ‘cold’, unengaged, or uninterested. Make sure you approximate this with your students, ease them in before they start, use good visuals to contextualize the listening, get them to anticipate, predict or even make a wild guess before they start. Role of script: first and foremost, the script is not a secret to be hidden away – because we are not testing their listening skills but trying to develop them, right? If so, the script can act as a great scaffolding and as a confidence builder. Why not let them read the script first, and then listen to the recoding (with or without the text still in front of them – vary this to keep up their motivation). Or listen and look at the script at the same time. The latter is very much like watching an English film on DVD – once you switch on the subtitles, suddenly you ‘hear’ what they are saying a lot more clearly and feel you can comprehend spoken English easily. In my opinion, the more of these ‘yes-I-can’ experiences, particularly at the outset, the more positive attitude we generate. And that’s a great asset for later on! While-listening: again, if you are really teaching listening with the help of a recording rather than testing your learners, why not stop in the middle, ask them how they are getting along, deal with any difficulties in a supportive manner, and get them 5 Robin Walker, ‘Improving listening skills: a basic framework for teaching listening.’, talk delivered at DOS-TTS Autumn ELTea conference, Dec 2006.
Scaffolding listening I do hope that the ideas presented above will help you genuinely support your learners’ listening as an emergent skill. Before concluding this short article, I would like to suggest that building scaffolds can also take the form of encouraging learners to turn the language input around in their heads in some form. The latter, we are learning more and more from numerous studies on memorization, is one of the most effective support systems for long term memory. We are not talking rocket science here – it only takes a bit of care on our part so that we do not 6 Paul Seligson, ‘Skills work!’, ELTea Masters in Action conference, Dec 2009.
Source: Evolution 1 Student’s Book, p. 51, Macmillan Education 2012.
rush too quickly over exercises that invite learners to sort, categorize or classify: It is a good coincidence that in the example presented here the invitation to categorize is phrased in L1 – a good way to reinforce the point I made above about principled use of Polish in a modern English programme. In conclusion, I do hope I have encouraged the reader to seek out every opportunity to orchestrate minimal listening moments for our students. If administered properly, they will gradually build the learners' confidence in their listening abilities, offer meaningful exposure to English, and as such build a solid foundation for all the other skills, including …reading. Yes, I mean it! The evidence comes from recent studies on effective readers in L2 – such people crucially align the visual shape of words that they see on a page with their phonological image that’s literally ringing in their ears. Which I hope justifies the title of this article in the end. Nick Beare
Nr MEN 471/1/2012
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to predict the rest before resuming? Or, if you feel they need extra help, replay a fragment, repeat the above steps, and only then go on? After listening: to really teach, consider avoiding the notorious ‘Who got the answer to question 3’. The latter favours the strongest, extrovert students and completely demotivates the rest of the class… How about putting all the answers up on the (e)board for everyone to see, and let your students comment freely, in pairs, groups, or as a whole class, on which ones they got right/wrong, why, what made this or that easy or difficult, which clues they have used if any. An important extra point: does such a follow-up have to be done in English as a matter of course (see below)…?! Listen in L2, report in L1: I wouldn’t go as far as saying that checking comprehension (listening or reading) should never be done in English. But doing it in Polish should almost certainly be offered as a legitimate option! This is a point that Paul Seligson made6 as part of his argument for isolating the main language skills when teaching them. Sounds radical, even counterintuitive perhaps, after years of being told that skills integration should be every modern teacher’s goal. That’s where Seligson’s insight is so valuable: skills integration is a highly desirable product or end result of good teaching – but it is far from obvious that the skills should also be taught all integrated! The process of teaching should crucially involve principled isolation of individual skills. What’s the benefit, the reader might ask? Well, only through isolation can we hope to focus on each of the crucial skills as such and address skillspecific concerns! Which entails, among others, that we should at least consider using a lot of scaffolds, including a principled use of the mother tongue, especially for checking comprehension – so that one’s likely deficits in speaking English do not block their opportunity to report back on relative success when listening or reading a piece of text in English!
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Evolution is a new 4-level course for Polish upper-primary classes, brought to you by Macmillan Education. Find out all the details and download samples from: www.macmillan.pl/evolution
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