Category: Higher education

C is for Collaboration

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Ken BeattyDr. Ken Beatty

It’s your first day of work at a new office and, because you’re eager, you arrive early and locate your cubicle. Looking around to make sure you’re alone, you race around madly to each desk, snatching up everyone’s stapler so you can hide them all in your filing cabinet. As other workers trickle in, mystified conversations erupt about the missing staplers only to be silenced by your ominously evil “Bwahahahaha!” cry of triumph.

Seriously? No. In office environments and most other work environments, we mostly stress cooperation and collaboration, which make it all the more mystifying why our classrooms so often stress competition.

Competition is normal and healthy but it is not the only way to meet objectives or to educate students. Imagine suddenly informing your language class students that they have one minute to prepare for a long-distance foot race. What would be their reactions? Most would claim that they were not properly prepared, having worn the wrong clothes and shoes. Some would immediately eye the other students and size up the chances of success. Those who were most able might welcome the challenge, thinking their chances of winning were good; competition tends to reaffirm current abilities. Those who were least able would rebel at the task, refusing to participate, not bothering to make an effort, or adopting a tactical approach, such as by finishing the race but only just—perhaps walking instead of running. Continue reading →

Teaching Short Stories

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Alexandra_LoweAlexandra Lowe
ESL instructor at SUNY Westchester Community College

The following blog post was written by Alexandra Lowe and originally published by TESOL International Association on June 3, 2015. It can also be accessed through the TESOL website.

At the recent TESOL International convention in Toronto, I was privileged to attend an outstanding workshop entitled “10 Tips for Teaching Short Stories” by Sybil Marcus, an inspiring teacher from the University of California, Berkeley. Presenting excerpts from two short stories, she showed us how she uses stories to teach critical thinking skills, style, grammar, and vocabulary, and to lay the groundwork for classroom debates and writing assignments. Sybil’s approach to teaching ESL skills through short stories sounded so compelling to me that I dashed back to my own classroom as soon as the conference was over to try it out.

One of the short stories she showcased in her workshop was Daniel Lyons’ “The Birthday Cake” (.doc). The story features two immigrants—an old, embittered woman from Italy and a young single mother from the Caribbean—who find themselves locked in an unexpected conflict. The story subtly raises challenging issues of attitudes toward immigrants, single parenthood, aging, isolation, and death.

The story was an immediate hit with my high-intermediate, low-advanced students. When we discussed an issue central to the story—whether the old woman was justified in her contemptuous response to the young woman’s plea for a special favor—my students were as bitterly divided as the two protagonists themselves. Even students who were normally shy and reluctant to speak in front of the whole class launched into a passionate debate over the merits of the old woman’s behavior. And what was particularly fascinating was the discovery that the battle lines among my students were drawn in unpredictable ways—students whom I would have expected to sympathize with the plight of the young mother were surprisingly hostile to her.

One bonus of this particular short story is that it is written almost entirely in dialogue, as if it were the script for a short play for three characters (the two women, and a man who finds himself entangled in their conflict).  So, naturally, I put my students into small groups of three and asked them to practice acting out the dialogue. After giving them the opportunity to practice their lines with three different sets of partners, I asked for volunteers to act out the story in front of the whole class. It was one of the highlights of the semester, as some of my shyest students threw themselves into their roles, displaying acting skills and abilities no one would have suspected, while some of the more outspoken students were able to “ad lib” additional theatrical lines for their character. Continue reading →

B is for Bell Curve

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Ken BeattyDr. Ken Beatty

First, let me leave nothing to the imagination: I hate the Bell Curve. Because I teach assessment statistics to graduate students, I know I shouldn’t callously bully an innocent graph of achievement, but it isn’t the tool itself I object to, but the wicked uses to which it is put.

Bad beginnings

The Bell Curve was first called “the normal curve of error” by Abraham de Moivre in 1733. He used it to explain games of chance, but by the 19th century, the Bell Curve was being misapplied to justify differences in society such as to support Francis Galton’s theories of eugenics, a pseudo-scientific movement to breed humans to produce a master race. It was only the Nazi party’s horrific love of the idea that led to its belated rejection (Goertzel & Fashing, 1981).

In time, the Bell Curve swept into classrooms as a popular means for quantifying levels of student performance. The assumption was that among any group of students, about 10 percent of the weakest ones inhabit the low end of the curve, most linger comfortably in the middle, and 10 percent can be assumed to be highly competent.

The Bell Curve in practice

At one university, my fellow teachers and I were forced to apply the Bell Curve to the grades of each of our classes. Practically speaking, this meant 3 of 30 students would get the lowest D and E failing grades, another 3 or so would get the top A grades, and the bulk in the middle, 24 students, could expect to earn C and B grades. Through considerable protests and prayers, management might permit us to squeeze the middle of the curve and award more A grades as well as save our weakest students from expiring in an assessment train wreck, but we had to beg.

Regardless of final figure manipulations, a bad taste was left in the mouths of both students and teachers. Students felt the Bell Curve inherently made the classroom unnecessarily competitive and that success depended not so much on an individual doing well as on others doing badly. It wouldn’t matter if each and every member of my class were the secret spawn of an Einstein cloning experiment; degrees of difference would be conjured up, and otherwise brilliant students would be spread across the Bell Curve like falling blossoms on wet pavement.

At the same time, teachers felt their work was devalued because even the most highly educated, experienced, and dedicated teachers offering the most innovative lessons could not hope to have their students score higher than those of their less-inspired colleagues. Any gains in student achievement attributable to a superb teacher’s work would be washed away in the Bell Curve. Teachers who rebelled against the obvious unfairness of it all faced the subtle punishment of having to provide detailed justifications of deviations from the so-called norm. From the administrative perspective, the Bell Curve helped even out teachers’ grades and avoid grade inflation, the creeping tendency for teachers to award higher marks, in some cases to garner positive evaluations. Continue reading →

Active Teach: Helping You and Your Students
“See the Language”

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SCAD Language Studio ? Professor Christina Cavage, Human Resources headshot, Fall 2013 ? Photography by Stephanie Krell, courtesy of SCAD Christina Cavage

Classroom teaching has evolved during my last 25 years in the classroom.  Our students have changed as well.  Long gone are the days of audiocassette recorders, and overhead projectors. Many classrooms today are outfitted with Smart Boards, smart TVs, and other digital tools. However, due to funding constraints and dated buildings, many classrooms are not fortunate enough to have these tools.  How can you appeal to digital natives, while at the same time work within the constraints of your classroom?

ActiveTeach is the answer. What is ActiveTeach?  ActiveTeach allows teachers to bring the text to life without the worries of a Smart Board. Take a look at this video of my colleague, Elizabeth Holland using the Active Teach for Next Generation Grammar during her class.

Notice how she is able to highlight text to draw more attention to the content. You also have the ability to enlarge, manipulate and annotate. These are great tools for any classroom, and can really appeal to our digital natives.

One great feature is the ability to do exercises from the text, right on your board, through the ActiveTeach.  My students love when I have them come up and complete information within the Student Book via the ActiveTeach. Take a look at the image below. You can see how to select an exercise, and have students complete the answers on the ActiveTeach.

The ActiveTeach also includes all the videos and audio files, as well as some great teaching tips, exercises and games.  Make your grammar come alive!

A is for Authenticity

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Ken BeattyDr. Ken Beatty 

Since the 1970s, teachers have been arguing about authenticity in the classroom. As a TESOL professor and textbook writer, I’m often asked whether I’m in favor of authenticity. It seems a simple question, but there are several related ideas to consider: How do we define authenticity? What is a continuum of authenticity? How does authenticity relate to materials, situation, and task? and Where and how do we locate authentic materials?

Defining authenticity
Most definitions of authenticity in the classroom can be reduced to the idea of something not created for use by language learners. In general, although textbooks can contain authentic materials, they are not authentic. On the other hand, we consider a local newspaper, menu, or bus schedule as being authentic; the language is natural and generally more applicable to the needs and interests of our students. This is one of the great strengths of exposing students to authentic materials: Outside the classroom, they continue learning as they encounter additional authentic materials.

A continuum of authenticity
The opposite of authentic materials are those that are inauthentic. Elementary school teachers and teachers of beginners use inauthentic materials such as simplified menus with purely descriptive names (hamburger) rather than confusing brand names (Big Mac®, Whopper®). Other aspects of the menu are similarly set in plain speech to avoid confusion.

But between authentic and inauthentic materials are constructed materials. In making constructed materials, teachers and materials developers usually start with authentic materials but simplify vocabulary, grammar, and even typefaces to make them more pertinent and accessible. In other cases, materials are constructed from scratch, based on different genres. As an experiment, I asked 56 experienced language teachers to review three passages and decide which were authentic and which were constructed. Only three teachers identified all three correctly (Beatty, 2015). If most teachers can’t tell the difference, well-written constructed materials are probably an acceptable alternative. Continue reading →