英文學習領域

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 Nurturing our students to be competent presenters

 

Ms CHAN Yeung-ming, Eve
(Senior School Development Officer)
Ms NG Yuen Man, Joanne
Ms CHAN Yee Man, Barley
Ms LAU Siu King, Simmy
(Tsang Mui Millennium School)

For some people, speaking is considered to be the most pivotal language skill. The underpinning conception is that majority of people use speech a lot more frequently than writing and reading to accomplish interactive communication in everyday life. In supporting the idea to develop students’ speaking skills, the Hong Kong English Language Curriculum Guide (Primary 1 to 6) states that ‘Key Stage 2 students should be able to present information, ideas and feelings clearly and coherently (P.54)’.

Although Hong Kong teachers are well aware of the importance of speaking skills and are fully conscious of teachers’ vital role in helping students with little exposure to spoken language, the time-pressed teachers in Hong Kong often find it difficult to systemically teach Key Stage 2 students the necessary speaking skills for different speaking purposes.

The conventional speaking curriculum emphasizing spoken dialogues gives students opportunities to converse for different social contexts. This dialogue-oriented speaking curriculum provides second language learners with a framework for social interaction purposes. Teachers in Tsang Mui Millennium School, however, found that this kind of speaking curriculum is not adequate to prepare students who should be confident enough to express their personal thinking and ideas in greater detail for more serious, intellectual and meaningful purposes. Students need a speaking curriculum which can cater for their needs to sustain an extended and content-rich speech. Also, the marking scheme of the Territory-wide System Assessment 2010 spells out that in presentations, P.6 students should be able to ‘Provide plenty of information and ideas relevant to the topic and communicate ideas very clearly’ and students should also be able to ‘Use a small range of vocabulary sentences patterns and cohesive devices with few grammatical mistakes.’

After analyzing the students’ language needs in presenting information and ideas for different purposes including internal examinations, external examinations and the academic needs in secondary schools, Tsang Mui Millennium School teachers have identified various overall frameworks to help students to organise presentations and the corresponding lexis and phrases that their students should work on.

Teachers realized that a presentation framework highlighting the importance of introduction, body and ending would effectively help students to put information together. When it comes to presentations that require more elaborations, students could proceed to learn to structure presentations from more general ideas to more specific ones. Students can also structure details of stories in ways that listeners can easily catch the plot and climax. The speaking curriculum can even integrate a more advanced way of arranging information: comparing and contrasting ideas.

For each of these frameworks of organizing information in presentations, students have to master the corresponding set of lexis and phrases. To elaborate ideas, students have to display the skills of showing examples and using their five senses to feel the surroundings. The language of grouping information and listing ideas using highlighting patterns, such as for…, and cohesive devices like first…, second.., help students to organize information more systematically. Students are taught the use of dialogue, monologue, story starters and cohesive devices to get attention, create climax and link up different parts of a story. When given two different scenarios side by side, students should be able to use contrastive connectives such as ‘however’, ‘but’, ‘similar to…’ and ‘unlike...’.

Teachers also find the following steps effectively help students to scaffold their learning experience.

1. Linking speaking to reading or writing

2. Helping students to frame and organize presentation ideas through script writing

3. Facilitating students to present the main gist of presentation through note-writing

4. Getting each student to be familiar with actual presentations through group work

5. Giving students immediate feedback on their speaking performance

The speech-made-easy 5-steps help students to turn reading or writing input into presentation contents. The script writing process then provides a framework for students to organize information. This is also an opportunity for students to apply different language patterns, lexis and phrases. The note-writing step is necessary for students to break away from the reliance on scripts. The actual presentations starting from talking to a small group of classmates to a roomful of classmates and teachers is a challenging yet rewarding learning experience to most of the students.

This curriculum initiative implies that students should be given enough air-time (Resnick and Snow 2009), the opportunity to talk, in the classroom. It is important that each and every student should be given the chance to present their ideas and to be heard in the classroom. The process is essential in that it enables students to realize the importance of communicate intelligibly. Unintelligible pronunciation, incoherent idea organization and erroneous use of vocabulary may result in communication failure. Yet, the teaching time is very limited. It is impossible to give all thirty to forty students a chance to give a presentation in the classroom time. Tsang Mui Millennium School teachers chose the co-operative peer learning context to maximize student presentation opportunities. In other words, students have the opportunities to present to their classmates. Teachers found that speaking up to group members is a fundamental initial step to raise students’ confidence to give a speech. The group context is a warm and cozy little nest where every member feels at ease with themselves when they are trying out and testing their newly acquired speaking skills before they are judged by the ‘authoritative’ adults or in front of a class of fellow classmates. Teachers noticed that this is the time when students helping each other to rectify speaking problems including unfinished utterances, incorrect pronunciation and excessive use of fillers such as ums and ers.

The meticulous group evaluation mechanism is another useful tool to facilitate effective learning among students. Initial evaluation mechanism focusing on students’ overall speaking performance including audibility, confidence, and eye-contact would give students an overall understanding of the general requirement of a presentation. A more detailed speaking skill evaluation mechanism highlighting more advanced speaking skills, such as use of connectives, common pronunciation problems and clarity of speech, can help students to make significant progress.

Teachers find that ear-time (Resnick and Snow 2009), the attention of fluent and responsive adults to give constructive feedback to students, is as pivotal as air-time. Unlike giving feedback to students’ written work in which teachers can always reread and revisit students’ work, teachers in a speaking classroom should have full attention and quick judgment on students’ speaking performance as students’ speaking output is gone by the time the presentation is finished. Teachers should be able to make professional judgment on students’ verbal communication skills and non-verbal communication skills immediately after students’ presentations. However, research suggests that ‘children who are corrected a lot, talk less often than, and not as well as, children whose parents respond to what they are saying rather than how they are saying it (Resnick and Snow 2009). Teachers’ first concern about giving feedback to students was what they should focus on.

Teachers’ feedback is even complicated by the fact that there should be consideration on students’ affective reaction to different kinds of feedback and their learning from the feedback. Teachers’ other concern about feedback was how they should do it. Teachers in Tsang Mui Millennium School found that their positive comments would significantly boost most students’ confidence to speak, especially the less-achieving students. Also different strategies should be deployed for different kinds of learners. The sheer experience of being able to speak in front of the whole class is already a life-time event for less-achieving students. However, the high-achieving students would appreciate more specific corrective feedback. The experience of giving feedback to students on their speaking skills has substantially enriched teachers’ pedagogical content knowledge (Shulman 1986). They have gone beyond the command of subject matter to an understanding of how to impart a specific teaching focus in the best manner to learners of diverse abilities.

In the process, teachers wrestled with a number of practical problems. While teachers found that students’ speaking skills can be enhanced by linking up speaking and writing, they also noticed that a number of students relied on scripts too much. Note-taking skills are needed to assist students to transit from the over-reliance on scripts to making a communicative speech. Little variation on the use of language was another acute predicament that teachers encountered. Teachers cracked the problem by widening and deepening the language input and encouraging language variety in students’ speaking output during teacher feedback time.

In this session, teachers of Tsang Mui Millennium School will share with you the conception of their curriculum design on improving students’ presentation skills, the creation of a classroom context which facilitates the development of children’s speaking skills, the problems they have encountered in the process of introducing this initiative into the school-based curriculum and the strategies they attempted trying to resolve the problems. Videos of students’ presentations will be shown during the sharing.

References:

1. Goodwin, P. (Ed). (2001). The Articulate Classroom: Talking and Learning in the Primary School. David Fulton Publishers: London

2. Hong Kong Curriculum Development Council. (2004). Hong Kong English Language Curriculum Guide (Primary 1 to 6)

3. Resnick, L. and Snow, C. (2009). Speaking and Listening for Preschool through Third Grade. New Standards: Washington.

4. Shulman, L. (2004). The Wisdom of Practice: Essays on Teaching, Learning, and Learning to Teach. Jossey-Bass: San Francisco.

 

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From quantity to quality: Kei Tsz’s road in helping students to improve their English writing

 

Ms Wong Kit Mei, Gladys
(Senior School Development Officer)
Ms CHIU Man Nar, Ida
Ms TSE Ka Ying, Karen
Ms WAN Hiu Yan, Rainbow
(CCC Kei Tsz Primary School)

 

 

Do the above scenes look familiar to you? Poor student performance in the P.3 TSA writing assessment was one of the big problems that the English teachers of CCC Kei Tsz Primary School faced several years ago. The problem was aggregated by students’ poor attitude. Some of them thought that they could not write at all. To get to the root of the problem, teachers talked to the students and found that many of them did not know what to write. Some of them even said that they were not capable of composing a piece of writing on their own. This explains why they either left the writing assessment blank or merely copied the questions in the examinations. Having identified the problems, teachers began to review their writing programme. They found that many of the writing tasks only required students to substitute words or phrases in the ‘model’ writing supplied by teachers. Students had little practice on composing a piece of writing independently. As a consequence, they ran into difficulty composing a piece of cohesive piece in the tests and examinations. To help students to write on their own, the Primary Three English language teachers at Kei Tsz Primary School began to look into the kind of support students should obtain before attempting the writing tasks. They re-arranged the learning tasks in each module to provide students with ideas, vocabulary and the language structures to be used in the final writing task. Instead of supplying a model writing for word substitution, graphic organizers like mind maps and story webs were brought in to help students organize the ideas for their writing. This careful scaffolding helped students build up common writing frameworks for describing a person, an object or an incident. At the ending of the training, students were able to write about their favourite classmates or describe a school picnic in simple paragraphs.

To address the issue of low motivation in students, teachers drew on the investigations by Graham, Harris and Larsen (2001) for ways to help struggling writers to write. They learned that ‘daily writing’ and a ‘risk free environment’, which aimed to promote an ‘I can’ attitude, were essential to encourage the learners to write. And more practice could help students write better. The suggestions inspired teachers to assign regular writing practice to their students. But daily writing was modified to bi-weekly journal writing taking into consideration the heavy workload for both teachers and students. Teachers refrained themselves from marking all the grammatical mistakes at the beginning of the term so as to encourage students to write as much as they could. After trying out for a term, it was found that the more the teachers responded to the students’ journal writing, the more the students were willing to write. Teachers turned some of the journal entries into extension tasks of the regular writing. For example, when students learned what and how to write about their classmates, they were asked to write about their best friends or their family members in the journal writing. This constant practice finally bore fruit at the end of the year. Only very few students left the writing task blank. The successful experience encouraged teachers to extend the practice to other levels.

When the children were promoted to Key Stage 2 last year, teachers found that regular writing practice could only boost students’ confidence to write more but there was much room for improvement in the content of their writing. Children were found writing only simple ideas without giving supporting details for elaboration. Besides, children were weak in using appropriate cohesive devices when composing longer texts. In view of the need to raise the writing quality, teachers decided to introduce new strategies to enrich students’ writing. Building on the practice of providing ample input prior to the writing lessons introduced last year, they began to look into the writing process. They believed that an understanding of the process by students could help them write better. Teachers borrowed ideas from process writing, which aimed to allow learners, especially young learners, to write with plenty of room for errors. The focus was more on the process rather than the product (Tompkins, 1990). Gardner and Johnson (1997) suggested that learners could improve their writing through a number of stages summarized as Pre-writing, Drafting, Editing, Revising and Publishing. These stages were not linear but they would come into play continually when the needs arose. Since process writing was a slow process and it would take up a lot of class time, teachers decided to adopt the approach but chose to work on only two focuses believed to be crucial in helping their students improve the quality of their writing. These focuses include (1) improving language fluency and accuracy through self and peer editing; and (2) enriching the content through providing more supporting details to the main ideas. These focuses were further developed into ‘predictable writing routines’ (Graham, Harris and Larsen, 2001) in the writing lessons in the second and third year. Students were guided to follow the routine of ‘thinking, reflecting and revising’ in their writing process. Students were guided to ‘think’ of how supporting details could be provided to enrich the main ideas when their classmates’ drafts were shared in class. They were then allowed time to read and ‘reflect’ on what they could do to enrich their writings. The last step would be on how they ‘revise’ their draft with richer details.

In this presentation, teachers will show you how they used feedback, feed-forward and individual conferencing to help students of different abilities to write better. Video clips will be shown and teachers will discuss with you the intervention strategies they adopted in the process. They will also share with you the problems they encountered when they encouraged students to write more on their personal experience in their journal writings and the strategies they employed to deal with these problems.

References:

1. Gardner, A., & Johnson, D. (1997). Teaching personal experience narrative in the elementary and beyond. Flagstaff, AZ: Northern Arizona Writing Project Press.

2. Graham, S., Harris, K.R., & Larsen, (2001) Prevention and Intervention of writing difficulties with learning disabilities. Learning Disabilities Research & Practice, 16(2) 62-77.

3. Tompkins, G. (1990). Teaching and writing: Balancing process and product. Columbus, OH: Merrill Publishing Co.

Walk our talks: using classroom assessment to inform learning and teaching

 

Ms CHUNG Chui-ngor, Jenny
(Senior School Development Officer)
Ms MA Shuk Kwan, Cindy
(SKH Chu Yan Primary School)
Ms LEE Wai Chun, Sharon
(Taoist Ching Chung Primary School (Wu King Estate) )

 

In the 2008/09 school year, External School Review (ESR) was conducted in 78 primary schools. According to the findings on the learning and teaching in the classroom, the following was recommended:

Teachers need to check students’ learning progress and identify their support needs through questioning and observation of their performance in classroom activities, and they need to adjust the teaching strategies, content and pace accordingly. There is also a need to give more specific feedback to help students realise their own strengths and weaknesses, to facilitate their improvement and deepen their learning (QAD, EDB. p 33, 2010)

It was reported that teachers usually see assessment, teaching and learning as three separate entities. It was a common practice for teaches to use summative assessments in the form of tests and examinations to find out the learning performance of students. Classroom formative assessment to inform teaching and learning was seldom used in the lessons observed in the past few years.

In order for ‘Assessment for Learning’ to play a more important role to drive learning and teaching, it was suggested that formative assessment be integrated into regular classroom practices. According to Black, Harrison, Lee, Marshall and Wiliam (2003), classroom formative assessment is the practice of collecting and interpreting information about students’ learning that consists of the following components:

§ active involvement of students in their own learning

§ sharing learning intentions with students

§ effective questioning to check students’ learning

§ providing feedback which leads to student improvement

§ adjusting teaching strategies with reference to student feedback

In an attempt to explore the feasibility and practicality of using classroom assessment to learn more about students’ learning process, teachers from SKH Chu Yan Primary School and Taoist Ching Chung Primary School (Wu King Estate) tried to integrate formative assessment into their daily teaching. Both schools are well-established and located in public housing estates. Learner diversities in SKH Chu Yan Primary School and Taoist Ching Chung (Wu King Estate) are obvious. Such diversities directly impact on teachers’ decisions about what to try and what to develop in the learning and teaching process.

To capture formative assessment practised in both schools, lesson observation was conducted in October and November. It is found that teachers always gave corrective feedback in their lessons. Such feedback is important but not sufficient to ensure that findings from formative assessment are used to enhance learning. There is a need for teachers to establish a culture of aligning assessment with student learning. More importantly, students’ feedback on how they learn is essential for teachers to adjust and modify their teaching strategies and learning materials. To make assessment more informative, more tightly tied to teaching steps, the use of classroom formative assessment through good questioning, quality feedback and sharing of learning intentions are important means. Teachers focused more on the happenings in the classroom to identify the strengths and learning difficulties of their students. They would seek to understand how their students learn English, and try to explain those instances when learning did not occur as planned.

Teachers were also prompted to explore the role of the language learning environment in shaping language learning and to find out how students interact in a second language classroom. They modified the questions raised by Spada and Lightbrown (2008) in How Languages are Learned and used them as framework for their observations:

§ Is there plenty of time available for language learning to take place; plenty of learning opportunities to use English for communication in classroom context?

§ Does the learner receive corrective feedback when he or she makes error in grammar or pronunciation, or does the teacher overlook these errors and pay attention to the message?

§ Does the learner receive corrective feedback when he or she uses the wrong word, or does the teacher usually try to guess the intended meaning?

§ Is the learner exposed to language which is modified, in terms of speed of delivery, complexity of grammatical structure, and vocabulary, so that it matches the learners’ ability to comprehend and interact?

§ Is the learner nervous about making mistakes and sounding ‘silly’ when speaking the language?

This presentation aims to report and discuss the efforts of two schools in integrating formative assessment into their daily teaching. It is hoped that the practical knowledge derived in the day-to-day functioning in the second language classroom can provide a basis for teachers to further explore what is happening in language teaching and learning and translate the formative assessment experiences into practice in their classrooms.

References:

1. Allwright, D and Bailey, D. (1994). Focus on the Language Classroom. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

2. Black, P, Harrison, C, Lee, C, Marshall, B, Wiliam, D. (2003). Assessment for Learning: Putting it into Practice. Berkshire: Open University Press.

3. Carless, D, Joughin, G, Liu N. F. and Associates. (2006). How Assessment Supports Learning: Learning-oriented Assessment in Action. Hong Kong: Hong Kong University Press.

4. Genesee, F. and Upshur, J. A. (2002). Classroom-based Evaluation in Second Language Education. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

5. Quality Assurance Division, Education Bureau. (2010). Inspection Annual Report 2008/09 Web version: http://www.edb.gov.hk/en/edu-system/primary-secondary/applicable-to-primary-secondary/sbss/school-based-curriculum-primary/professional-sharing/journey-ss/2011/qa_annual_report0809_e.pdf

 

6. Richards, J & Lockhart C. (1994). Reflective Teaching in Second Language Classrooms. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

7. Spada, N. and Lightbrown P. M. (2008). How Languages are Learned. Oxford: Oxford University Press.

 

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Working together: experience sharing on incorporating group discussions into the General English Programme

 

Ms FUNG Ho-kwan, Jeanda
(Senior School Development Officer)
Ms WOO Sze Wan, Emily
(HKTA YYI Chan Lui Chung Tak Memorial School)

In the sharing session conducted in 2009 on ‘Working together: Necessary conditions for productive group work’, teachers were brought to an understanding of the necessary conditions for students to talk fluently while they were on group tasks. The conditions are: awareness, appropriation and autonomy. With the implementation of small class teaching this year, teachers have expressed the need for more examples of group learning in Key Stage One. Such a concern is common to many language teachers. Working in collaboration with English language teachers at two primary schools this year, attempts were made to generate examples on how to plan and implement group discussions as part of the General English curriculum at KS1. Teachers spent more time delving into the development of group discussion skills in Primary 1 and 2 students.

Many teachers may wonder whether Primary 1 and 2 students can be engaged in group discussions conducted in English. Very often they hear comments like, "Our groups just couldn’t work.", "Students won't work well in groups.", "If I do group work, I won't be able to cover all the textbook contents before the examinations.” They always consider that there is little co-operation between students who have just been promoted from kindergarten. Most of the group work time is spent on non-productive free talk in Chinese. While teachers feel the need to find ways to maximize the opportunities for students to practice speaking English in group discussions, they want to identify strategies that can encourage cooperation among students. They think that they need to be more aware of students’ capacity in speaking and listening as these skills are central to the objectives of the English Language curriculum at all key stages. But teachers think that junior students cannot speak English well because first, students have very limited English; second, the curriculum is so congested that they cannot find time to engage students in speaking tasks. But spending too little time on speaking skill development may pose hurdles to developing other skills, thus affecting the overall language proficiency development (English KLA, English Language Curriculum Guide (Primary 1-6), 2004). The National Literary Framework for Teaching (DfEE, 1998) puts speaking and listening at the centre of its definition of literacy:

Literacy unites the important skills of reading and writing. It also involves speaking and listening which although they are not separately identified in the Framework, are an essential part of it. Good oral work enhances pupils’ understanding of language in both oral and written forms and of the way language can be used to communicate.

Teachers at the two schools decided to shove up students’ ability in the areas of speaking and listening because these two skills remain less vigorously and systematically planned, taught and assessed in their English curriculum over these years. So they attempted to address the issue through re-organizing the curriculum to make room for the inclusion of the speaking and listening activities in the General English curriculum. The junior students in these two schools were provided with sets of scaffolded learning materials to practice speaking and listening in contexts. They were taught self-evaluation skills to facilitate their interaction with one another in groups. The design of the learning materials and strategies was inspired by literature on developing listening and speaking skills (E. Grugeon, L. Hubbard, C. Smith and L. Dawes, 2000; and S. Thornbury, 2005) and literature on developing group work (D. Jaques, 2000).

Knowing that they could not start group discussion activities at just one or two levels, teachers planned group activities for each module at all levels. The English Panel Chairpersons paid good attention to the design of the group discussion tasks. They decided on which part of the module might lend themselves to conducting group work - whether this was done at the beginning stage such as brainstorming ideas for the writing tasks or applying what student had learned in the group tasks through speaking. The group tasks were carefully explained to the class on how the groups should operate and how students would be assessed Teachers taught every group how to get started, how to monitor progress, and gave guidance to group members on role taking and participation. They provided students with the skills they needed to succeed in group discussions. They found that many students needed practice in such skills as active listening, helping one another in mastering the content of the tasks, giving and receiving constructive comments and managing disagreements. Teachers discussed these skills with their students and modeled and reinforced them during class. Teachers also explained how students would be evaluated.

On designing group discussion tasks, teachers found that they needed to create tasks that required student interdependence. Each group member was made responsible for a part of the task and everyone should contribute to make the task successful. It was also important to make the group task relevant and match it to the learning objectives of the whole context or the learning module of the General English Curriculum. They also came to realize that if the task was an add-on activity not integrated properly into the main content and context, students would find it very hard to apply what they had learned to the tasks. When creating challenging tasks that matched students' skills and abilities levels, teachers needed to understand well students’ prior knowledge and their competence in following group learning routines and instructions.

Apart from planning and implementation of group discussion as an integral part of the General English curriculum, teachers also found developing students’ meta-cognition skills during evaluation and assessment indispensable. Learning how to approach a learning task, monitor comprehension of the task, and evaluate the progress towards the completion of the task were important processes. Students needed to develop self-awareness, self-monitoring and self-regulation abilities during these processes. These elements were carefully considered in the collaborative lesson planning meetings. In order to collect evidence of students’ performance in group discussions, teachers learned to make judgments and record individual progress. The initial assessment of students’ speaking skills focused mainly on observable features of talk. For example, voice, eye contact, pronunciation and the like. This not only helped students develop their own talk gradually but also let them be aware of how they interacted with people. It also helped them take an active part in their own learning.

Throughout the curriculum planning process with a focus on group discussions, most students showed improvements in the observable features of talks. As the tryout proceeded, students developed positive group behaviours such as encouraging others, being nice to group members, listening actively and being supportive of other group members. They were more confident to speak in the public. During the tryout, three important factors contributing to the success of organizing group work and discussions in English Language lessons were identified. First, social skills and group roles need to be taught explicitly and well-scaffolded to assist establishing group collaborative processes. Second, the meta-cognitive strategies of planning, monitoring, and evaluating are important in fostering students’ self-awareness in groups. Finally, a supportive environment needs to be nurtured in which students are motivated and are able to receive positive feedback. The two-year tryout has brought positive changes to students’ group discussion ability and the levels of interests in language activities. The students gradually developed an understanding of how to contribute effectively to the group learning tasks.

In this presentation, teachers will share with the audience their practices and ideas about how to plan and organize group discussion tasks, implement the use of group work across different levels, and monitor and assess group work. The English panel chairlady from one of the schools will share with the participants how she planned, implemented and evaluated the benefits of group work in small classes at her school. During the presentation, video-clips on classroom interaction, student work and learning and teaching materials will be shared with the participants to illustrate how teachers use group work effectively to raise students’ language proficiency.

References:

1. E. Grugeon, L. Hubbard, C. Smith and L. Dawes. (2000). Literacy through Oracy: Teaching Speaking and Listening in the Primary School. London: David Fulton Publishers.

2. D. Jaques. (2000). Learning in groups – a handbook for improving group work. London: Routledge Falmer.

3. S. Thornbury. (2005). How to teach speaking. London: Pearson Longman.

4. R. Ellis. (1994). The Study of Second Language Acquisition. Oxford: Oxford University press.