Exploring Engagement in ELT Teaching

Part III: Cognitive Engagement

Reflecting back on the last year has me, and most likely many of you, asking were my students engaged in this new normal? If this is to be a normal way of delivery, how can I engage them even deeper?  Well, if you have been following along, you are probably pretty familiar with the definition of engagement I have been working from–“the degree of attention, curiosity, interest, optimism, and passion that students show when they are learning or being taught”. We know that engagement involves emotional engagement, which we looked at in the first blog, and behavioral engagement, which we looked at in the last blog, and cognitive engagement, which we will unpack in this blog.

What is Cognitive Engagement?

When we think of cognitive engagement, we may ask, Are my students interacting with content and applying the new content? Are they developing their learner autonomy? It’s really about effort and investment. However, this effort and investment begins with the teacher. The delivery of the content, or the manner in which we teach the content, can either foster or discourage cognitive engagement. What exactly do I mean? Well, the content has to be accessible to leaners, and that includes the terminology we use to teach the content. We also have to scaffold learning or take them up Bloom’s taxonomy. So, how can we build lessons that cognitively engage our students?

Strategies to Build Cognitive Engagement

Very much like both behavioral and emotional engagement, it’s all about leveraging our traditional teaching methods and the types of activities we have students participate in. When we unpack this a bit more, we can really break this down into four key segments: language of our delivery, allotted time for ‘learning’, scaffolding content, and time for learner engagement with content.

Element #1: Language of Delivery

Have you ever explained an English grammar lesson, used the correct terminology, albeit subject, object, participle, etc., and looked out at your class and saw blank stares? Or worse yet, called out a question on Zoom and were met with silence? For many of our students these terms may be familiar, but for many more they simply aren’t. The level at which a student entered your program may be a factor in how familiar they are with terms. So, how can we overcome this? Well, a silver lining in our COVID world is the tools we have available to us and are using. Imagine teaching a grammar lesson, and students ‘watching’ the grammar come alive.

video

Take a look at the screenshot of this video from the Pearson English Content Library Powered by Nearpod. It is done in the Khan Academy style. As the teacher is talking through the lesson, students are hearing the lesson, but also seeing it. The visual helps to support the terms the students are unfamiliar with. Furthermore, we need to make sure we focus on not just the what, but the how and the why—think language, form, meaning, and use.

Element #2: Allotted Time for Learning

We often have a lot to do in a little time. We may use our entire class period to present one lesson. However, how many of our students are truly able to absorb it all? How many are ‘engaged’ the full amount of time? In today’s digital world, with today’s digital learners, it is not realistic to think that they can listen to a lecture for an extended period of time, and ‘learn’ all the content and that is why microlearning has become some popular. Microlearning is about learning in small digestible pieces. Students learn in chunks, and then have an opportunity to practice one chunk before moving forward. Studies have shown that microlearning enhances retention and engagement for students. So, when planning a lesson, consider the chunk-chew-check method. Chunk the learning, give students a task or simple activity to chew on the new information, and then check—think formative assessment.

formative assessment

Element #3: Scaffolding

When we deliver a lesson, it is natural to build tasks and practices in complexity. That is really what scaffolding is all about. However, we often work on remembering and understanding in the classroom, or during class time, and then allow students to do the heavy lifting at home—creating. In order for students to be cognitively engaged, and not lose their motivation, it is important we walk them through each step in class, giving them the tools and skills they need to walk themselves through each step outside of class. Scaffolding needs to be thoughtfully designed in and out of class tasks. Take a look at a lesson in the Pearson English Content Library Powered by Nearpod. You will notice how the lesson walks students up Bloom’s taxonomy, each time asking a bit more of them, all the while engaging students in their own learning process.

grammar lesson

Element #4: Learner’s Time

Lastly, our students have busy lives, but we know that for a student to be truly engaged in learning, they need time outside of class to engage with content. This allows them to interact at their own frequency rate, but it also helps ELT students build those very critical academic skills, like autonomy. As educators, we need to set that expectation. We need to let students know that learning a language is a partnership—we can provide lessons, but outside of the classroom, they need to dedicate time. The digital world has once again come to our rescue and provided tools that we can use to engage students outside of class. Whether you use a Learning Management System (LMS), or another digital environment, your students can interact with content outside the classroom through additional practices and interactions.

live or student-paced lesson

Imagine launching a lesson in class, but students being able to work through that same lesson again outside of class. With the Pearson English Content Library Powered by Nearpod, you can launch a lesson during class, or as a student-paced lesson, or both. The engaging platform allows students to interact, scaffolds the lesson, and provides a microlearning lesson.

In the end, we know the more engaged our students are, the more they learn. That is our goal, isn’t it?


Pearson English Content Library Powered by Nearpod
Want to know more about the Pearson English Content Library Powered by Nearpod? Visit pearsoneltusa.com/nearpod.

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.

Motivating Students for Online Learning

Ken Beatty
By Dr. Ken Beatty

Motivating Students for Online Learning

Every teacher knows tricks to keep students motivated in a face-to-face classroom: a word of praise, an encouraging smile, a well-timed challenge, and grouping students to promote friendly collaboration or competition. But usual ways of motivating students may be less effective in an online classroom. Teachers need to adapt some strategies while adopting new ones.

Here are seven strategies for motivating online English students.

1 Expect participation: In many online courses, students rely on video recordings, watching them later. Students claim advantages for doing so. They can watch when they’re most alert and not distracted by other concerns. They can also watch a video more than once, to better review difficult topics. But language learning classes need to be interactive. Students need to ask and respond to questions, and listen to and speak with other students. Expect all students to participate in each and every class.

During class, students may not wish to appear on video, leaving the teacher and the rest of the class looking at a grid of blank tiles. Maybe it’s privacy concerns about a home environment, especially for students studying in their bedrooms. But most conferencing platforms allow students to create virtual backgrounds. Tell students to use these because facial expressions and body language are essential to communication.  

2 Build social groups: Why do students drop out of online courses more often than face-to-face ones? A key reason is that online students don’t have the same feeling of commitment that comes from connecting with others. When dropping a face-to-face class, students are aware they might bump into fellow students whose first question will be Why? It’s not the case for online students.

The solution is to build relationships, engaging students in frequent pair and group activities. Encourage study buddies but maintain privacy by asking students to get class-specific email accounts.

3 Personalize assignments: Students need language that is personal to them, such as to discuss things about their families, experiences, and food preferences. Give students language tasks that ask them to reflect on their own lives. Personalized content and assignments are more motivating and allow students to learn new specific content. 

4 Create pair and group assignments: Schools have long had a focus on individual learning, even though most things we do for work and pleasure are group-oriented. Here’s a task from StartUp, Level 2, Unit 3, What are you doing today? It starts with a video example that students can watch multiple times online or on their phone app, and then asks students to make a video of their own, talking about things they like and don’t like to do.

Example task from StartUp, Level 2, Unit 3
Media Project (StartUp, Level 2, Unit 3)

Although it’s an individual task, the final step is to share and get peer feedback. It’s also an easy task to adapt by asking students to make additional videos in which they interview each other and comment on others’ likes and dislikes. Pair and group assignments get students using the language they’re learning.

5 Ask students to show what they know: A lot of assessment is based on asking students to repeat what a teacher or textbook has said, using set phrases. Yet we know language is flexible, and there are many ways to say the same thing. Asking your English learners to memorize information can be demotivating, especially if they are more focused on passing a test than improving their competencies. Give students a chance to show what they know in ways they are comfortable sharing. It might be a recording, a speech, a play, or some other genre. The freedom to choose is motivating.

student studying outdoors

6 Encourage long-term writing and speaking: An ideal task for language students is to keep a diary, but few do, often finding writing about themselves too repetitive or embarrassing. However, there are alternatives. Encourage students to write a few sentences or a paragraph on a different topic each day. Start by suggesting topics related to the content of your classes, then let students suggest other topics as days go by.

Or ask students to each take a photo with their phones, and write three sentences about it. Share these with the class through a group social media account. If your focus is on listening and speaking, students can record voice memos.     

7 Predict the future: Learning English opens up academic, social, and work opportunities. Ask students to imagine a time when they will be fluent English speakers. What will their lives be like? How will they use English? Imagining the future and having goals helps motivate students.

Some of these strategies, like personalizing assignments, are forms of intrinsic motivation that come from the students’ hearts; they’re motivated by personal interest and ambitions. Extrinsic motivation, outside the students’ own interests, comes from making them aware of the academic, social, and work opportunities that better English language skills give them. If the content and context of learning online is not intrinsically motivating for each of your students, make sure you find ways to extrinsically motivate them.


Dr. Ken Beatty has worked in secondary schools and universities in Asia, the Middle East, and North and South America. He is author of 77 textbooks for Pearson and has given 500+ teacher-training sessions and 100+ conference presentations in 33 countries. His most recent books are in the LEAP series, and he is Series Consultant for StartUp.

StartUp is the new general English course for adults and young adults who want to make their way in the world and need English to do it.

The Importance of Student Involvement When Learning Online

By Mario Herrera

“Give pupils something to do, not something to learn; and the doing is of such a nature as to demand thinking, or the intentional noting of connections; learning naturally results.” – John Dewey

Correct teaching strategies and structures actively engage students in many ways. They should be hands-on, interactive, and generative by nature, encouraging students to critique, construct, and produce knowledge through meaningful involvement. In the classroom, students teach each other; they develop new knowledge with teachers as co-learners. Because teachers are following the principles of Assessment for Learning (or they should), they are continuously analyzing and synthesizing what their students are doing. Therefore, conducting a more adequate, efficient, and reliable process allows them to decide interventions as they go, and thus also learn. But what if this process is applied online? How can we keep the interaction and generative nature of students alive and well, so they can continue being the engine that allows them to get involved, interact, critique, construct and produce in a meaningful, proactive way? This article explores the options we have.

Now that we are so avidly busy teaching online, what about the learners?

Dependent vs. independent learners

Dependent learners don’t do well online, but because it is not for the teacher to choose, he/she must promote independence as the ongoing learning style. They both need to understand that to be successful in online courses, they need to include a process in which learners will have to act in more independent ways compared to what is common in in-person sessions. Teachers have to design activities with learners working on their own, and students need to learn to be more responsible in independent scenarios. Although teachers can only do so much online, many times, their teaching can have more positive repercussions on students’ learning than if they were teaching them in-person. Teachers need to know how to design activities that will carry their students from just attending a session to carrying on unsupervised activities with the caveat that they should not be challenging to assess.

Keeping learners involved

To engage your students, always remember to segment the presentation of your teaching activities into shorter sequences and regularly check comprehension by asking quick questions that test whether students understood the key point in each of the short segments. Remember to keep the interaction going. Always give examples and use gestures and your tone of voice to present. Go through those examples step-by-step. Also, maximize access to material for all students. Assigning offline tasks is also a great way to engage students who don’t always have mobile devices or internet access, or who can’t sit still in front of a screen for too long. When students bring their schoolwork into the real world, they practice self-directed learning and build valuable skills. Plus, you might be surprised at your students’ creativity!

When planning, always ask yourself if there’s enough call for creativity. The more you set up your students to being creative, the more attentive they will be.

There are two broad categories of activities to keep in mind when wanting to keep our learners involved with online classes:

  1. While the students are sitting in front of their screens participating in a class.
  2. When the session is over but not the lesson per se.  

The best way to present a concept is by showing examples and describing them. Let’s explore the possibilities of involving students when taught online, using a reading activity from Big English, level 3. The analysis that follows the story will be more useful if we first read it.

Big English: Story

1. While the students are sitting in front of their screens participating in a class.

chart: while students are sitting in front of their screens participating

2. When the session is over but not the lesson itself

Parents’ role in involving students appropriately

Parents can be your greatest ally in this “new normal.” Connect with them early and often to send home assignments, share login info for any online platforms students need to use, and find out what kind of resources students have available to them.  It’s better to over-communicate than under-communicate. Like everybody else, parents are overwhelmed, and many feel ill-equipped to support their child’s learning at home. When you make it clear you’re available to support them in any way you can, they’re more likely to become active participants in their child’s learning. Turn it into a win-win situation!


Big English, a six-level English program for primary school learners, delivers comprehensive English language acquisition alongside CLIL and broader life skills, supported by unique online digital teacher and student resources.


Mario Herrera has a degree in education and an MA in EFL. He has taught English for more than 30 years at all levels, from young children to adults. He is the author and co-author of many acclaimed ESL/EFL series that are used in levels ranging from pre-primary to junior high schools, including Big English and Backpack. As an international consultant and teacher trainer, Mario Herrera travels the globe, directing seminars and delivering professional development workshops throughout the Americas, Europe, the Middle East and Asia.

Leveraging the Transfer in Transferable Skills

By Lia Olson, Ph.D.

There is no question that teaching transferable skills can be powerful. In many ways, it is the cape we don to prepare our diverse adult learners to meet the varied needs and goals that will make them successful in any endeavor they pursue. After all, the skills they are learning are transferable.

We know there is truth to this, despite my hyperbole. According to The National Research Council in its synthesis of the literature on the subject of transferable skills, “Business leaders, educational organizations, and researchers have begun to call for new education policies that target the development of broad, transferable skills and knowledge” (2012).

We have responded to that call. First, we adopted College and Career Readiness Standards for Adult Education (2013) and purchased quality instructional resources to promote rigorous learning. Then we combed our textbooks, googled “transferable skills lists,” and read the WIOA legislation (2014) cover to cover to discover the identity of those transferable skills that would pack the most punch. We added them to our curriculum, our daily lessons, our learning goals, our learning tasks, and our assessments. Finally, our learners have been practicing them in class and even mastering them on our assessments.

Yet, our lamentation still rings out: “Why don’t my students apply what they have learned?” This lamentation clearly puts the ownness on the students, for we know we have done about everything we could do. And, after all, according to our assessments many of them learned it. But…(long pause here)…did they learn it?

The lists we consult, the learning goals we outline, the tasks we design focus on the skills in transferable skills. Indeed, this is a crucial element. But, isn’t its modifier equally crucial? The National Research Council (2012) states that learning that is transferable must “include both [emphasis added] knowledge in a domain and [emphasis added] knowledge of how, why, and when to apply this knowledge to answer questions and solve problems.” In other words, transferable skills must transfer.

The idea of transfer

So, what is transfer? We know what it looks like in everyday life: we transfer money from one account to the other, we transfer from one bus to another, one job to another, and one customer service rep to another and another and another.  In every instance, we are called upon to use what we know about the first situation, how it is connected to the next, and how to use what we already know when we get there. This transfer is successful, according to the National Reacher Council (2012), when the “ability to recognize familiar elements in novel problems allows them [expert learners] to apply (or transfer) their knowledge to solve such problems.”

If they are not practicing transfer, they are just learning skills

According to the National Research Council, that transfer becomes possible “when effective instructional methods are used.” What are these “effective instructional methods”? Many of them we are already using. We are already teaching the knowledge and skills in rigorous ways to engage our learners in productive struggle. Yet, we can teach our learners transferable skills all day long, but if they are not practicing transfer, then they are just learning skills. By the same token, we can teach any skill and make it transferable when our learners practice transfer!

So, what does it mean to “teach” transfer?  Let’s look for guidance from two gurus of the constructivist theory, the theorist Jerome Bruner and the philosopher John Dewey (p. 137).

Teaching specific topics or skills without making clear their context in the broader fundamental structure of a field of knowledge is uneconomical.  ~Bruner (1960)

To grasp the meaning of a thing, an event, or a situation is to see it in its relations to other things: to see how it operates or functions, what consequences follow from it, what causes it, what uses it can be put to.  ~Dewey (1933)

Creating a formula for transfer from their combined wisdom could, then, look like this:

Formula for transfer
Formula for transfer

In some ways, we already do this. We have tasks to activate prior knowledge, application tasks, and expansion activities. But are we leveraging them to focus on transfer? How often have we shortened or skipped one for the sake of time? Do these tasks transfer the learning to multiple contexts, or better yet, contexts of the learners’ choosing? We are still largely driven by the content we need to cover, and our students are still largely assessed on what they learn within one context.

Leveraging transfer

Leveraging transfer takes a paradigm shift in our thinking about instruction and instructional planning. No longer are we satisfied with a focus on knowledge and skills if it does not include an emphasis on transfer. In this way, we make time for transfer by including learning tasks that allow students to contextualize the content they are learning in multiple ways, make connections between the content and other content, and apply the content to multiple situations.

How do we do this? The good news is there are already many tried-and-true tasks we can leverage to maximize student practice in transferring knowledge and skills. Here are some examples:

KWL+

The KWL chart, sometimes with the addition of the plus, is an activity to effectively support and evaluate student learning from the start of a lesson to its finish.

KWL+ chart
KWL+ Chart
  • The K can meaningfully extract the prior knowledge students have, not just about the topic at hand but about other topics that relate to it or are relevant to them.
    • What other things do you know that can help you understand this topic/learn this skill?
    • What learning have we done that will help you learn about this topic/learn this skill?
  • The W can include a question starter that helps students connect the current learning to other relevant areas in the lives.
    • How does this information/skill apply to __?
    • How will this information/skill help me ___?
  • The L can maintain its context-dependent stance to focus on the objectives of the lesson within the context to set the stage for greater transfer.
  • The + column can be expanded to include how the topic/skill relates to learners’ goals, needs, and interests.
    • How do I apply this knowledge/skill to __?
    • How do I use this knowledge/skill to __?

Activate Prior Knowledge

Often lessons begin with a discussion or prompt to help students connect the new learning with what they already know. Adding the K questions from the KWL+ chart above leverages this activity to include other knowledge and skills (including learning strategies) that students can connect to as they begin the lesson.

Venn Diagram

The Venn diagram is used to explore connections between things, specifically how they compare and contrast. Strategic placement of a Venn diagram task in the lesson allows learners to explore the connections between and among contexts by identifying the knowledge and skills they have in common and considering how those knowledge and skills would be used in other context(s).

Venn Diagram
Venn Diagram

Brainstorm

Who hasn’t done a brainstorm? What about one that specifically asks where else learners can use the new knowledge or skill?  This activity can be done before the learning to get buy-in and show relevance or after the learning as a way for students to reflect on how the learning can transfer to other areas of their lives.

Brainstorming graphic
Brainstorm

Expansion

We plan for expansion activities all the time. Often, they are the task that gets cut when we run out of time. In addition, they often don’t expand beyond the context at hand. Instead, learners apply the learning to a new situation within the same context. Leverage expansion activities to move students beyond the current context to explore other contexts that are directly relevant to them. Students can choose the context and discuss how the new learning would transfer. What knowledge and skills could they use in that context? How could they use them? What adaptations would they make to what they learned to fit this new context?

Exit ticket

One common closure activity is the exit ticket. This can take the form of written or oral answers to 1 – 3 summary questions; a think-pair-share where students think of one thing they learned in class, pair to talk about it with a peer, and then share out with the class; or a turn-and-talk partner exchange to summarize the learning of the day. Including a question around where and/or how students are going to transfer the learning from the lesson means that students leave the classroom with transfer at the forefront of their thoughts, just when they need it the most.

The heart of the matter is that without transfer, transferable skills are just skills. They only become magical when we create the opportunity for transfer.  When our lessons brim with the lively exploration of concepts, connections, and contexts then, just maybe, the cape fits…and we should wear it. After all, we and our learners are up against a lot. We need all the leverage we can get!

References

Bruner, J. (1960). The process of education. Cambridge, MA:  Harvard University Press.

Dewey, J. (1933). How we think: A restatement of the relation of reflective thinking to the educative process. Boston: Henry Holt.

National Research Council. (2012). Education for Life and Work: Developing Transferable Knowledge and Skills in the 21st Century. Washington, DC: The National Academies Press. https://doi.org/10.17226/13398.


Lia Olson, Ph.D., has served as an ESOL classroom teacher, professional developer, curriculum design specialist, author, and consultant. She has taught adult learners for more than 20 years at St. Paul Public Schools Adult Education. In addition, she is an adjunct professor for the Teaching English as a Foreign Language program and Adult Basic Education licensure program at Hamline University. As a curriculum design expert, Dr. Olson has developed curricula and teaching materials for ESOL students at all levels that integrate English language acquisition with numeracy, technology, and work-readiness skills.

Useful tips for your English classes

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.

Addressing the 4Cs with online learning
Click here to read and download the full article.
Priming the brain for teaching and learning: Mindfulness goes to the classroom
Click here to read and download the full article.
Reimagining student engagement in distance learning
Click here to read and download the full article.
How to find free grammar resources using the teacher toolkit
Click here to read and download the full article.