Tag: Ken Beatty

Online Teaching and Learning Are Here to Stay

Posted on | by Pearson
By Dr. Ken Beatty

Online Teaching and Learning are Here to Stay

Thomas Edison
Thomas Alva Edison in 1922.

In 1913, American inventor Thomas Edison predicted that books and teachers would soon be obsolete. In their place, students would use his motion picture projectors to learn. Getting rid of teachers is an old idea, but one that’s been repeated every few decades, with radio, TV, computers, phones and, more recently, Massive Open Online Courses (MOOCs).

These predictions are usually self-serving. It’s clear that Edison’s prophecies were rooted in his eye for profits. The same attitude persists today, with educational institutions looking for ways to save money. Online teaching, for example, while not replacing teachers, removes the cost of building new classrooms and teachers’ offices. Teachers and students also tend to use their own computers and pay for their own internet connections rather than using a school’s resources.

Is online teaching and learning likely to fade away like Edison’s primitive motion picture projectors and other failed technology experiments? Probably not. Instead there are at least seven ways that online teaching and learning are here to stay.

1. Internet access is becoming a human right

The United Nations has declared internet access as a universal human right although it doesn’t say that it should be free. Giving students free access to the internet is important because of the unfairness of the digital divide where wealthier students prosper because they have better access to educational tools like computers and services like Wi-Fi. Many educational authorities are starting to find ways to get every student outfitted with a computer and online. As this happens, online learning becomes a more realistic option for everyone.

2. The role of peers as educators

We’ve abandoned the short-sighted model of the teacher having all the knowledge and students being empty vessels to be filled. Anyone studying online soon becomes aware how easy and important it is to learn from one’s peers. Students have much to offer each other and, if given the chance, can help in ways that teachers cannot. Doing so online, rather than in a quiet chat during a face-to-face lesson, means that it is less disruptive and less limited by time constraints. 

>> You might also like: Get Students Working Together Online

3. Blended (hybrid) learning can divide input/output

In simple terms, language learning involves two processes: input and output. Input is all the teaching that happens, as well as the reading and listening students do. Much of this can be taught and done outside the classroom in a blended (hybrid) learning model. Face-to-face classroom time is reserved for output, the chance for students to use the language they’ve learned, getting feedback from peers and teachers. These ideas are part of the flipped learning model.  

>> You might also like: Applying FLIP.

4. New times, new media

online learner

It’s difficult to imagine a job today where your first assignment would be to write an essay. This does not mean that it’s not important for students to learn essay writing; it is. Learning to write an essay is about learning how to think and explore a point of view, and the essay format applies to everything from news articles to application letters. But, increasingly, students are communicating in visual ways, such as computer-based presentations, and using photos, and videos. Online learning makes it easy for students to add these digital components to their assignments, better preparing them for the world of work.

5. The importance of digital professional development

Many resources for teachers once kept in Teacher’s Books are now online, and media helps make them far more engaging. StartUp, for example, has a Teacher’s Portal packed with useful text and video resources to help both novice and experienced teachers improve.

Pearson English Portal Teacher's Resources
Pearson English Portal: Teacher’s Resources

6. The evolution of the textbook into a multimedia tool

Textbooks have come a long way in the past 50 years as resources shifted from being teacher-centered to more student-centered. Where once a teacher would be the only one able to play a recording or show a film in class, students now have control over extensive media and interactive exercises online. Rather than just watching a video once or twice in class, students are now free to preview and review media and do online and app-based exercises where they want and when they want.

7. The use of social media for sharing ideas and assignments

Imagine handwriting an assignment 100 years ago. You’ve spent many hours and covered pages with your best penmanship. Before handing it in, you’d share it with a friend who suggests dozens of large and small changes. Would you be reluctant to start over? Probably. Today, in the computer age, everything is different. Students can easily edit online and, using social media to share digital assignments, can easily get feedback and make changes. Online learning encourages peer editing, and peer teaching as well.

>> You might also like: Motivating Students for Online Learning

There are many reasons why education doesn’t change, but it’s not always because what we’re doing is the best way. There’s sometimes a sense that whatever system is in place is good enough. There’s also an enormous inertia to overcome, making it hard to stop doing what we’ve always done. But change must come, and with a move to online learning it will come, one teacher and one student at a time.

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

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.

Motivating Students for Online Learning

Posted on | by Pearson
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.

Get Students Working Together Online

Posted on | by Pearson
By Dr. Ken Beatty

Think. What’s a common job that someone does individually, never working with others? It’s a surprisingly tough question. Astronauts, surgeons, and even star athletes don’t work on their own. Instead, they work with partners. Why then, is there such an emphasis in schools on students learning on their own and being assessed individually?

astronaut

Part of the answer is the traditional purpose of schools. In the last century, schools were sieves, sifting out more-able students from less-able students. The best students would go to universities, and the best graduates would get the best jobs. But many of those so-called top students left school without the people skills necessary to work with others. But language learning is–and always has been–different.

To learn a language, students need to use it. Students need to use critical thinking and communicate with others in speech and writing, just as they need to communicate with partners when they enter the world of work.

Your student textbook doubtlessly features many pair, small group, and whole class activities. Some of these are easy to do online using breakout room features found in Zoom (integrated into StartUp) and other meeting platforms. But there’s always much more you can do to promote student collaboration and increase students’ opportunities to use language. Here are six practical strategies you can use to get student engagement with English and with each other online. To better imagine them, consider a sample unit from StartUp, an eight-level English course for young adults and adults. Level 4, Unit 10, What will the future bring?

1 Change pairs tasks into group tasks: The following task asks students to remember things they’d learned, done, or decided by certain ages. Beyond comparing the answers with one partner, how could the task be expanded to include more partners? One way is to ask students to rate the most impressive one and then discuss in a group, ranking achievements. A second way is to ask students to talk to other members of the group in a rapid fashion, finding other students who had had the same achievements, perhaps at different ages, e.g., learning violin at ages 5 and 12. A third way is to ask students to create a group timeline and then talk about it: “When I was five and Emily was six, we each learned to swim.” The aim is to get students talking more.

Try it yourself activity from StartUp

2 Read and reflect: Each StartUp unit features a reading and each one is a topic that students can further research. Ask them to search online for related articles or stories, and share in central online file, such as a Google document. Make students responsible for making sure there are no duplicate readings. Each student then chooses two of the readings and reports on how they are similar or different. It’s a task that will naturally encourage students to read and reflect more widely.

3 Argue the opposite: The writing tasks in StartUp come with graphic organizers like the one below. In this task, students brainstorm about advice. Once students have finished filling in their outlines, they can photograph them with their phones or computers, and share them with the rest of the class. Each student then chooses one and argues the opposite, suggesting, in this case, why the advice might be bad. This helps to develop critical thinking skills.

4 Watch and explain: In StartUp Levels 1 to 4, an end-of-unit Put it Together project inspires students with a video, after which they answer a few comprehension questions to make sure they understand. They then go on to take or choose photos, or record a video, using their phones, then share it with the class to get feedback. One way to expand the activity is to have each student watch and explain another student’s photos or video, ensuring that they understand perfectly.

5 Take apart the test: Besides pairs of mid-term and final tests, each unit of StartUp offers two tests. Having two tests means that one can be given as a practice test, as formative assessment. Rather than just give students the answers, let them work together, comparing their own answers to see where they agree and differ. They can then peer teach the points that some students may not have understood. It’s not just about getting the right answers, it’s about making students more reflective and providing opportunities for them to use their reading, writing, speaking, and listening skills in an authentic way.

6 Connect students: The above tasks are all suited to classroom discussion, but to get students working together outside of class, they need to connect online, by email. However, privacy can be a problem; students should not be asked to share their permanent emails with the risk of them being shared with strangers, leading to cyberbullying. A solution is to ask each student to get a unique email for the class, such as a .gmail account. A sample email format might be studentfirstname_coursename@gmail.com. After the course is over, students can delete the accounts and continue communicating with trusted new friends on their permanent emails. 

Online learning is here to stay. Getting students comfortable with it is a great way for them to continue along the path of lifelong learning, personalizing their studies, making use of virtual resources, and connecting with other English language learners.

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.

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.

Q is for Questions

Posted on | by Pearson

Q is for Questions

by Dr. Ken Beatty

When is a question not a question?

This is not a zen koan, or mystery meant to make you to reflect on the meaning of life; the answer is “When it’s a rhetorical question.”

Rhetorical questions are one of many question types that language learners find challenging both to understand and, in this case, to answer. It does not seem to help that the students will likely have been exposed to rhetorical questions in their first languages; there is often little or no transfer. This is perhaps because an intense focus on trying to understand and participate in conversations distracts language learners. They struggle to give an answer to a rhetorical question when none is expected.

Like other question types, rhetorical questions have a range of specific purposes. The first of these purposes is to stimulate the listener into considering the answer and, if the speaker is successful, coming to a common conclusion. Consider these examples of rhetorical questions, all of which can be confusing to the second language learner:

  • Do cows fly?
  • What will the future bring?
  • Why are some people still ignorant about climate change?

The first example is used to indicate that the answer to the question being asked is obvious. If someone asked you, “Are you hungry?” and you replied, “Do cows fly?” it would be perceived as a clever way of saying no. This is because the answer to your question — “No, cows do not fly.” — is both obvious and in the negative, so it says no by extension.

“Why didn’t you just say ‘no’?” the frustrated language learner might ask.

The second rhetorical question has a different purpose. It’s an example of a question for which the answer is either unknowable or so broad as to be unanswerable. Instead, this type of rhetorical question is often used to set up ideas that follow. It ensures that speaker and listeners have a common focus. In this case, the common focus is on the future and listeners can expect the speaker to share additional questions and ideas on that topic.

The third example, about climate change, narrows the topic by setting out a point of view. Listeners will recognize that the speaker will likely follow the question with criticisms of some people’s ignorance of science. The question may pique your interest in the topic but, if you are neither intrigued nor of the same opinion, you might decide that you do not want to hear any more and stop listening.

As the above questions show, wh‑ words are often used to front questions, as do forms of the verbs be, do, and have. In particular, be, do, and have are often used in tag questions, where a statement is followed by a couple of words to check agreement.

  • That’s a flying cow, isn’t it?
  • Cows fly, don’t they? (Note that do after cows is understood and can be omitted.)
  • You’ve seen cows fly, haven’t you?

Tag questions also have negative forms. Note how the affirmative and negative forms of the verb are balanced in opposition at either end of the sentence in the examples above and below.

  • There aren’t any flying cows, are there?
  • You don’t ever see cows fly, do you?
  • You haven’t seen cows fly, have you?

Modals, such as can, could, may, might, should, and would are also used to form tag questions.

  • You should be careful around flying cows, shouldn’t you?

Along with who, what, when, where, why, and how, modals are used to form questions, but language learners often think the only purpose of such questions is an earnest request for information.

Wrong.

Questions have many purposes, and understanding speakers’ intentions is necessary for true comprehension of deeper meanings.

Like rhetorical questions, an impolite question such as, “Are you a fool?” neither needs an answer, nor does it deserve one. Instead, a listener has to understand that the speaker’s intention is to criticize, reprimand, or ridicule. Similarly, when I was young, a common question in my home was a rhetorical question used to reprimand me, “If your brother jumped off a cliff, would you jump off a cliff too?” referencing my somewhat wilder older brother’s tendency to do excitingly dangerous things that I would often imitate. Though two years younger, I was somehow expected to be more sensible (but I probably would have jumped off a cliff if my brother did it first).

Less offensive questions include hypothetical questions. These resemble rhetorical questions because they sometimes deal with obscure or impossible ideas but often have another purpose: they may be thought experiments. Consider this question:

  • What would chairs look like if our knees bent in the opposite direction?

Hearing this, you might be tempted to reject the question altogether. But this was an actual task at a leading design school, and the purpose was to get students to think outside of the box, testing their design skills against a novel problem. It was meant to break the habit of recycling old ideas of, in this case, what a chair should look like and do.

With all questions, and perhaps particularly with hypothetical questions, it’s common to ask follow-up questions, which, in interviews, are sometimes called probing questions. Language learners often struggle with asking follow-up questions. In a conversation, they may ask a question, get an answer they do not understand, and then worry that everyone else does understand. So they remain quiet rather than take the risk of embarrassing themselves. Of course, this happens to many native speakers as well, but it’s especially unfortunate in the language classroom, which should be a welcoming space where students feel comfortable asking questions and making mistakes. However, at the same time, conversational etiquette discourages someone from asking so many questions that overly interrupt a speaker’s flow during a speech or lecture.

  • Hypothetical question: What would farms look like if cows could fly?
  • Question: Do you mean that cows would have wings?
  • Answer: Yes!
  • Follow-up tag question: Then, in terms of physics, the wings would have to be enormous, wouldn’t they?

Follow-up questions are often clarification questions, where only one detail needs to be confirmed:

  • By wings, do you mean like bat wings or feathered bird wings?

This clarification question is an example of one of the two most common question types: closed-ended questions. Closed-ended questions are ones for which there are only one or two basic answers such as yes or no:

  • Would you like to see a flying cow?
  • Yes! / No!

Open-ended questions give the speaker more of an opportunity to share ideas:

  • Why do you think cows might want to fly?

With open-ended questions, a simple binary answer is not possible, and the conversational expectation is that you will think more deeply on the question.

Another type of question that can be troubling for language learners is reduced-form questions. These questions assume that both people in a conversation understand the context, so one or two words can take the place of a question.

  • I just saw a flying cow!
  • Where?

The full form of the question would be “Where did you just see a flying cow?” but the reduced form makes for more efficient discourse and, if other speakers do not understand, then they can always ask a clarification question.

With so many question types, it’s important for language teachers to use a mix in their classrooms and that students get the opportunities to ask and answer them.

Just be careful about flying cows.

Tasks for Teachers

  1. Record one or more of your classes. Then check how many questions you have asked and whether they are spread across a range of question types or whether they are more limited to factual questions and closed-ended questions. Do you give students time to answer the questions you ask? Check how many seconds typically elapse before you volunteer an answer yourself.
  2. Before a class, consider your topic and prepare a list of questions using each of the types listed above. Try fitting them into the class and see how natural or difficult it is to do so. Consider Bloom’s Taxonomy and ask more creative and analytical questions rather than just factual ones.

Tasks for Learners

  1. The Feynman Technique is an approach to learning that starts with asking yourself what you know about a topic and then listing all the questions you have. Try this at the start of a week in one of your classes and see how many of your questions are answered. Ask other students and your teacher for answers to your remaining questions.
  2. Play a follow-up question game. One group begins with a simple statement, such as “There are many stars in the universe.” One student from the second group asks a question, such as, “How many stars are there in the universe?” Another student from the first group has to guess or answer (more than 100 billion), and the third student asks a follow-up question about the answer. The game continues until one of three things happens: the first group cannot think of an answer; the second group cannot think of a question; or either an answer or a question is repeated. Keep score!

Dr. Ken Beatty, teacher trainer, writer, and TESOL Professor, has promoted best teaching and learning practices from primary through university levels in 300+ sessions in 33 countries. Ken is author of 140+ textbooks, including books in the Pearson series Learning English for Academic Purposes (LEAP).

 

E is for Error

Posted on | by Pearson

Ken BeattyDr. Ken Beatty

Coming home one afternoon from my job teaching English to university students, I found my four-year-old son prancing around the kitchen with a beach towel cape around his neck, fighting evil superheroes with a wooden spoon. “Spencer,” I said, “How was your day?”

“Good,” he replied. “I swimmed with Mommy.”

“No!” I sternly reprimanded him. “The verb swim has an irregular past tense verb form!”

No, of course I didn’t say that. It’s not the language or the attitude one uses with a four-year-old. Instead, I employed what is called a recast: “Oh, you swam with Mommy.”

“Yes,” he confirmed. “I swam with Mommy.”

Spencer’s use of swimmed is a common but intriguing utterance that gives us an insight into childhood language acquisition. It is highly unlikely that he had ever heard the construction from either his parents or his articulate seven-year-old brother. It’s possible he might have picked it up from one of his four-year-old friends but, more likely, it was an illustration of a young and flexible mind’s ability to generate grammar rules and then apply them in conversation. In this case, Spencer is likely to have intuitively noticed the pattern of regular past formation with ‑ed, in words such as walked (but not run/ran), talked (but not speak/spoke), and napped (but not sleep/slept). He then naturally—and experimentally—applied the formula to the word swim.

But was the resulting utterance a mistake or an error?

Mistakes and errors seem like interchangeable terms but, in linguistic terms, they are quite different. Even the most competent native speakers make countless mistakes in the course of a day’s speech. Often referred to as slips of the tongue, these mistakes tend to be mispronunciations or grammatical lapses that native speakers immediately know are wrong. We mispronounce words when we’re tired, or interrupted, or are speaking more quickly than the speed of thought; our brains and tongues are not in sync.

Similarly, grammatical lapses often occur because we begin saying one thing, and then our thoughts are diverted and we end by saying something else. Typical of this type of mistake are subject-verb agreement issues (Give me one or two apple—I mean apples.). Other common errors are article mistakes (I want the book—I mean, a book.), or preposition mistakes (Get in—I mean on—the bus.). Self-correction is so common that it has its own linguistic label: repair.

In texts and emails, we tend to ignore such problems as the products of stumbling fingers, and in other computer-based writing, our errors might be automatically corrected. In speech, we tend to self-correct unless our message is urgent and/or obvious mistakes are unlikely to interfere with meaning. If the listener knows what was meant, it’s most usually the polite choice not to correct the speaker. On the other hand, a speaker’s mistake that seems like an important point or one that throws the conversation into ambiguity, sometimes prompts a listener to ask for clarification. In the sentence “While I was in Germany, I went to Brussels.” might prompt the listener to query, “Did you mean Brussels or Berlin?” In this case, it might have been a slip of the tongue and the speaker did mean Germany’s capital, Berlin, or perhaps it was about going on an international trip to Belgium’s capital of Brussels.

But what about errors? Continue reading →