Find out some of the many ways that schools ensure their students’ success by exploring our case studies. As our efficacy and evidence-based library grows, we’ll be adding more case studies to this page, so please check back often.
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Read how the American Language Institute affiliated to the University of Toledo implemented Pearson’s NorthStar with MyEnglishLab, Versant English Placement Test, and the Global Scale of English (GSE) and how it benefited their instructors and students in a variety of ways.
Browse the resources below to find some useful tips and resources for your English classes.
As our library of useful tips and articles grows, we’ll be adding to this page, so be sure to check it often.
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By Gosia Jaros-White, Marketing Manager, Pearson ELT USA
After making the emergency transition from face-to-face to remote instruction last spring, many programs continue distance learning as the pandemic keeps its grip on the world. Remote instruction poses many unique challenges for English language programs. These challenges include how to encourage student engagement, promote interactive communication practice, balance synchronous and asynchronous learning, build a classroom community virtually, and deliver remote instruction that is effective on a range of student devices.
With the new edition of Future, teachers can engage, support, and challenge their adult learners at a distance by leveraging the program’s considerable digital and print resources. Future not only prepares learners to meet their life, career, and educational goals, but it also helps instructors deliver high-quality engaging lessons remotely, both synchronously and asynchronously.
It all begins with the Pearson English Portal – a powerful platform that delivers Future digital resources to instructors and students, such as MyEnglishLab, eBooks, and the ActiveTeach. With these digital resources, you can transition your Future course online and ensure your students have the resources they need to continue learning.
This handy toolkit offers tips and suggestions for teaching remotely with Future, 2E.
Future eBooks
Reader+
Students don’t have their books? No problem! For studying on-the-go, the Future eBooks are the perfect solution. Delivered on the Reader+ platform, the eBooks can be accessed on a computer, tablet, or smart phone. The Reader+ application allows students to read and interact with rich digital content and multimedia assets through highlighting, annotating and many other study and reading tools. Users can store all their eBooks and notes in one place and access them at any time, as all of their content gets synced across multiple devices. Designed with offline capabilities, Reader+ offers a perfect solution for areas with low bandwidth or unreliable Internet access.
The eBooks are also a perfect resource for synchronous instruction in a remote setting. Teachers can share pages from the eBook using Zoom capabilities (or other web conferencing platforms) and use multiple tools to zoom in, highlight, add text, and play the class audio.
The Reader+ app can be downloaded from the app store.
MyEnglishLab
MyEnglishLab
MyEnglishLab is an easy-to-use learning management platform that delivers additional Future course content digitally. MyEnglishLab is an excellent resource for asynchronous instruction, delivering engaging exercises, videos, and tests in one place. Students can practice each lesson’s content in an interactive environment with instant feedback and tips to scaffold their learning. Teacher can take advantage of the MyEnglishLab platform to assign homework, monitor performance, and pinpoint areas for improvement.
ActiveTeach
ActiveTeach
The ActiveTeach is an offline tool that delivers student book pages, audio, video, additional activities, and teacher resources. You can use ActiveTeach with Zoom or other web conferencing platforms to share the Future book pages with your students. In the classroom, it can be used a computer and projector or with an interactive whiteboard to bring the book to life. With ActiveTeach you can zoom in, zoom out, and focus on specific activities. You can annotate pages, embed links, and attach files. You also have access to full class audio, printable worksheets, interactive exercises, assessment activities, tests and interactive whiteboard tools. The ActiveTeach for Future comes as a downloadable zip file within your course on the Pearson English Portal.
Watch this video to learn how to install and use the Future ActiveTeach
Pearson Practice English App
Pearson Practice English app
The Pearson Practice English app is a mobile app that delivers Future audio and video resources on smart phones. Students and teachers can easily access their course resources anytime, anywhere. The app can be downloaded from the app store and unlocked with the same Pearson English Portal login and password.
Additional Teacher Resources
Teachers can feel fully supported with Future teacher resources. Available on the Pearson English Portal, these resources include additional worksheets, Teacher’s Edition pages, robust assessments, standards correlation documents, and more.
Watch this video to learn more about how to access all the available teacher resources for Future.
To learn more about Future, access additional videos and resources, please visit our Future catalog page.
Our team is dedicated to helping you achieve success with Future, 2E. If you would like us to help you get started, please contact your dedicated Pearson ELT Specialist at pearsoneltusa.com/reps.
English language educators are bridge builders. We build bridges not only between people and their goals, but also between people. Language is all about connecting with others. When we learn a language, we are opening ourselves up to those personal connections. Our entire field is centered around connecting and communication. If you are like me, you probably gave very little thought to that pre-COVID. But, how about in our COVID world? How can we build those bridges when there are walls, borders and oceans between us? As I am planning my course for the Spring term, I can’t help but reflect on how I can be that bridge builder. How can I connect my students to others when it’s challenging for us to connect? Or, when my old ways of engaging learners do not translate in this new medium? It’s important to define engagement in this new environment of remote instruction. What is it? Why is it so critical to student success? And, how can I build it? Before we look at how we can build engagement in our ELT classes in the time of remote instruction, let’s examine what engagement is.
What is Engagement?
Engagement in learning is about “the degree of attention,
curiosity, interest, optimism, and passion that students show when they are
learning or being taught, which extends to the level of motivation they have to
learn and progress in their education.” This engagement involves behavioral
engagement—are our students participating? Are they working in groups
effectively and efficiently? Then we have cognitive engagement—are they
interacting with content and applying the new content? Are they developing
autonomy? And, emotional or affective engagement—are they motivated? Do they
see relevance in what is being studied? Are they comfortable in the learning
environment?
Emotional Engagement
Now that our learning environments look quite differently,
how can we build and assess engagement? Well, as ELT educators we are very
cognizant of the importance of emotional engagement. We know our students need to feel comfortable
to take those language risks. We have spent a lot of time thinking and
designing lessons that lower that affective filter– making students more
comfortable in the classroom. Thinking of my old ways of teaching, this may
have involved ice-breakers and small group or pair introductions. What does
that look like today when I can’t easily pair students, or I have some students
online and some face-to-face? How does that happen when we move to a digital or
hybrid model of teaching?
Strategies to Build Emotional Engagement
It’s all about leveraging the tools we have. And, on the upside, there are many benefits. Often times that ‘everyone is looking at me’ intimidation goes away in a virtual or digital environment, and students feel freer to share and engage.
Strategy #1: Build a Community Before Class Begins. If you are using an LMS, such as Canvas, Blackboard, Moodle or Google Classroom, consider posting a video of yourself describing your interests, expectations, etc. Ask your students to submit a video of their own. Then, begin class by asking follow-up questions, or noting individual interests. Pair students up by interest. Create a task where students ask targeted questions. “I saw you play soccer. How often do you play?” They can then introduce their partner to the class that extends upon what the video included.
Post a video introducing yourself
Strategy #2: Hold a Coffee/Tea Hour. This should be an informal open house type of meeting where students can drop by virtually and ask questions about culture or language.
Strategy #3: Use Collaborative Tools. Consider using collaborative tools like Nearpod. The collaborative board within Nearpod allows learners to share their ideas, see everyone’s ideas and even like one another’s ideas.
Collaborate! activity in the Nearpod platform
Strategy #4: Think-Pair-Share/Zoom. Rather than
immediately putting students in a breakout room, and giving them tasks, give
students time to think. Model what you expect to happen in the breakout room.
Assign pairs via Zoom breakout rooms and have them share in their rooms.
Providing students time before you open breakout rooms, allows
for students to better use their pair time, and be on task while in the
breakout room.
Strategy #5: Races. Students love competition whether online or
face-to-face. These races can also serve as great formative assessments.
Consider grammar. Create a Powerpoint with common errors, then have students
race to type in the correct answers. Or, if teaching vocabulary, put a sentence
up with a missing vocabulary word. Provide students choices (A, B, C) and then
have them type in the correct choice. For quick formative assessments, have
students use the thumbs up or other reaction tool to indicate if something is
correct or not. My favorite is the Time to Climb in Nearpod.
Students can choose their avatar and you set the time limit. Students answer
questions and race up a hill. They are awarded points by both their correct
answer and how fast they answer. These races build community and you will find
students ‘talking’ about these races for weeks to come.
In summary, moving learning online isn’t easy. It takes thoughtful planning and careful execution. However, there are numerous tools out there that can help build that engagement. Well-planned digital and hybrid lessons can even be more emotionally engaging to students today. Stay tuned for next month when we will look at strategies to build behavioral engagement.
References:
Student Engagement Definition. (2016, February 18). Retrieved January 05, 2021, from https://www.edglossary.org/student-engagement/
Christina Cavage is the Curriculum and Assessment Manager at University of Central Florida. She has trained numerous teachers all over the world in using digital technologies to enhance and extend learning. She has authored over a dozen ELT textbooks, including University Success, Oral Communication, Transition Level, Advanced Level, Intermediate Level and A2. Recently, Ms. Cavage completed grammar and academic vocabulary curriculum for the new Pearson English Content Library Powered by Nearpod, which is now available. Learn more here.
U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services (USCIS) has announced that it is reverting to the original (2008) version of the civics test for citizenship. We have updated our new citizenship site with information about the decision. Please visit pearsoneltusa.com/citizenship for more information and useful resources.
January 2021 was already going to be a time of transitions for our programs that prepare immigrants to become naturalized citizens. In addition to updating the answers to some civics test questions to reflect recent election results, we need to prepare for a transition to a new version of the civics test that poses challenges for our students and programs. And then came the January 6 attack on the U.S. Capitol, which demonstrated to many of our students the precariousness of the system of government they are learning about and the sudden fragility of some of the basic facts they need to know for the test, including the system of checks and balances among three branches of government, and the rules of presidential succession.
The Transitions: A
New Administration and a New Civics Test
Every U.S. election can result in changes in answers to some
of the civics questions for naturalization, which ask students to name the
President, the Vice President, the Governor of their state, their
Representative in Congress, the Speaker of the House, and one of their state’s
U.S. Senators. The U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services (USCIS) website
offers a link with updates for the federal offices. For example, after the
inauguration on January 20, the site will let us know the multiple ways
students can name the new President, which will likely include Joseph R. Biden, Jr, Joseph Biden, Joe Biden, and possibly just Biden.
(A link to the USCIS test update page is here.)
The greater transition challenge this year is the major
revision of the civics test of U.S. history and government knowledge. The test
is significantly more difficult and lengthier than the current version, which
requires applicants to answer correctly six out of ten questions from an item
pool of 100 possible questions. The new test requires applicants to answer
correctly 12 out of 20 questions from an item pool of 128 possible questions.
Many of the new questions are more difficult, use more complicated vocabulary,
or are provoking controversy regarding their content. In addition, while the
old test stops as soon as applicants answer six questions correctly, the new test
requires applicants to answer all 20 questions regardless of whether they have
already answered 12 correctly. This will potentially increase the amount of
time that USCIS officers need to administer the civics portion of the exam and
thereby result in longer and fewer interviews per day, further exacerbating the
agency’s backlog in processing citizenship applications.
Given these concerns, many education programs, advocacy organizations, and others have submitted comments to USCIS calling for the new test to be rescinded or delayed until it can be further reviewed by the new administration. (My recent article describing issues with the new test is available here.) As of this writing, there has been no change in the policy, and the new test is required for all students whose citizenship application filing dates are December 1, 2020, and after. Students who filed prior to that date will take the old test. So unless there is a policy change, our citizenship education programs currently need to prepare students for two different sets of civics questions depending on their application dates. And since USCIS regional offices vary widely in their appointment backlogs, programs around the country will experience different percentages of students needing to prepare for the old and new test versions.
Here are some resources that show the comparison between the
old and new sets of civics test questions:
A listing of the old test questions (with a comparison to the new questions) is available here.
A listing of the new test questions (with a comparison to the old questions) is available here.
A Voices of Freedom unit-by-unit integration of the old and new test questions is available here.
The attack on the Capitol on January 6 has had a profound
impact on many of our immigrant students, whose reactions have ranged from
shock and fear that an insurrection could occur in the United States, to a wary
familiarity with such events from their experiences in their countries of
origin. For many students in our civics classes, the principles of democracy
and the stability of the government institutions they are studying are beacons
of hope lighting their pathway to citizenship. Many cite the rights and
responsibilities of citizenship as the fulfillment of a dream as they prepare
to take the oath of allegiance at their naturalization ceremonies.
But many know too well from their home countries how fragile
government institutions and people’s rights can be. Ironically, while one of
the most important aspects of attaining citizenship is for our students to
eventually be able to have relatives join them in the U.S. through family
immigration, many students were hearing from those family members after the
events at the Capitol to check on their safety and the stability of the United
States.
When considering these events through the eyes of our
students, it is also important to acknowledge that many of them have
experienced the effects of growing anti-immigrant sentiment over the past few
years, and many are in communities that have been disproportionately impacted
by the COVID-19 pandemic and the resulting recession. These students’
motivations for acquiring citizenship therefore also may include the goal of
increasing their safety and acceptance in the country as well as safeguarding
their lives and livelihoods.
The challenges our students may be facing coupled with
uncertainty surrounding the recent events may result in their having lots of
questions, concerns, and a need to share during instructional time. Whether you
are offering citizenship instruction or general English language instruction, and
whether you are currently meeting with students remotely or in a classroom, here
are links to some resources you may find useful for incorporating lessons or
conversations about the U.S. Capitol insurrection:
“What Happened During the Insurrection at the US Capitol and Why?” – a resource from Facing History and Ourselves, is available here.
“Three ways to teach the insurrection at the U.S. Capitol” – a lesson plan with videos from the PBS Newshour, is available here.
“Lesson from an Insurrection” – interviews with 15 instructors about how they and their students have responded to the events, from the education news site The 74, is available here.
A “January 6, 2021 Resource Guide” – from the New York City Department of Education, is available here.
I am currently preparing an article on how immigrant students view the January 6 attack and invite you to share any writing about this by your students. If a student would like to have her or his photo included and give permission, please send any submissions to: bill.bliss@languageandcommunication.org.
