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  12. <title>TEFLing</title>
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  32. <title>Small ways to give up control</title>
  33. <link>https://isabelavillasboas.wordpress.com/2017/12/14/small-ways-to-give-up-control/</link>
  34. <comments>https://isabelavillasboas.wordpress.com/2017/12/14/small-ways-to-give-up-control/#comments</comments>
  36. <dc:creator><![CDATA[isabelavb]]></dc:creator>
  37. <pubDate>Thu, 14 Dec 2017 21:57:00 +0000</pubDate>
  38. <category><![CDATA[Classroom management]]></category>
  39. <category><![CDATA[Methodology]]></category>
  40. <category><![CDATA[control; twenty-first-century learning]]></category>
  41. <category><![CDATA[Educational technology]]></category>
  42. <category><![CDATA[innovation]]></category>
  43. <category><![CDATA[methodology]]></category>
  44. <guid isPermaLink="false">http://isabelavillasboas.wordpress.com/?p=709</guid>
  45.  
  46. <description><![CDATA[One of the best features of my job is that I get to observe teachers in their second semester in the language institute where I work.  In their first semester, they go through a mentoring process and are then observed by two other academic specialists. These observations usually go very well. The teachers are very [&#8230;]]]></description>
  47. <content:encoded><![CDATA[<p>One of the best features of my job is that I get to observe teachers in their second semester in the language institute where I work.  In their first semester, they go through a mentoring process and are then observed by two other academic specialists.</p>
  48. <p>These observations usually go very well. The teachers are very professional in their attitude toward the whole process; they submit their lesson plans in advance and participate actively and reflectively in our pre and post-observation meetings. I find it a very rewarding experience in that I am able to gauge how effective our initial teacher development program has been and what still needs to be worked on. In this sense, I always look for patterns in these teachers’ performance so we can plan future continuous professional development initiatives.</p>
  49. <p><span id="more-709"></span></p>
  50. <p>This semester I observed excellent classes in which the teachers had a clear learning outcome and planned and carried out activities that effectively led to the attainment of these objectives. The students were engaged and interacted by way of a variety of pair and group work formats. However, I identified a common feature in three of these great classes: the teachers’ need to be in control all the time. I will give three practical examples to illustrate my point.</p>
  51. <h2><u>Class 1</u></h2>
  52. <p>The goal was for students to ask and answer questions about who their favorite singer or band was and what kind of music they played. For the consolidation activity, having gone through more controlled stages in the lesson, the teacher had flashcards with currently famous singers and bands. She taped them around the classroom for students to walk around and interact. They did so very actively and produced the target dialogue effectively. Technically speaking, it was a good activity.</p>
  53. <p>However, who controlled the singers and bands students talked about? The teacher! It was a group of teenagers. All of them had smart phones and there is Wi-Fi at school. What a perfect opportunity to have them open their playlist or You Tube and show each other their favorite singers and bands! Would it be a bit messier than the pre-planned activity? Probably! Might they have shown each other songs with dirty words? Maybe&#8230;  But it would also have been much more authentic and would have more effectively simulated a real-life type of interaction among teens.  A little more noise and a little more mess does not mean less learning.</p>
  54. <h2><u>Class 2</u></h2>
  55. <p>Students had already learned some regular past-tense verbs and the goal of this class was for them to review these regular verbs and add some irregular verbs to their repertoire so they could talk about experiences at a definite time in the past. The teacher shared her lesson plan with me and discussed how she would carry it out. At one point in the lesson, she had planned to show students a slide with two columns – one with regular verbs and the other with irregular ones – and have the students name the two categories. I immediately asked her why she was already categorizing the verbs and suggested she give them the verbs randomly and have them decide what the two categories were and then name them.</p>
  56. <p>At first, she was a little uncertain whether they would be able to do this more demanding and higher-order-thinking task, but then she decided to give it a try. We talked about different ways she could do this, my favorite one being giving pairs or groups the verbs on slips and having them manipulate them and put them in two columns, without saying how. She thought this might become too messy, so she decided to use the slide, but with the verbs presented randomly, and ask students to classify them into two columns.</p>
  57. <p>Needless to say, the students were immediately able not only to separate the verbs into two categories but also to say what they were – regular and irregular verbs.  The teacher released some of the control to the students. Nevertheless, the slips activity would have added more movement to the class and they could have sat on the floor for this task and interacted among themselves more actively in deciding how to categorize the verbs. Again, messier? Yes! But the students would also have been in much more control.</p>
  58. <h2><u>Class 3</u></h2>
  59. <p>This is a teacher who is very organized with her materials. When I arrived in class, she had already arranged all the learning space and sorted out all the resources she would use in class, such as slips, an iPad with an app to time activities, the computer and projector, etc.  One could easily see she was very meticulous. Again, the class went very well; there was a great variety of activities and the students produced the target language effectively.</p>
  60. <p>Nonetheless, there was one aspect that caught my attention. Every time a student asked a question about an unknown word or the like, the teacher had a classmate explain. Great! Peer explanation; relinquishing control. However, she always validated the student’s response, perhaps so that the other student would be sure that the peer’s explanation was correct. When I brought this up in our post-observation meeting, it was clear that the teacher was not aware that she was doing this.  After all, it is hard for us teachers to get out of the way and let students sort it out themselves. We tend to think they won’t trust their peer’s answer or correction. Well, if we don’t give up this control, they really won’t trust each other and the interactions in class will always be mediated by us, rather than flow smoothly among the students themselves.</p>
  61. <p>These are three simple and quite common situations in which a slight change in the classroom techniques and procedures can contribute to releasing more control to students. The lessons described are quite typical of a language classroom, and the situations I presented here could potentially go unnoticed by another observer who is not as adamant as I am regarding the need for teachers to relinquish control in their classes. In fact, I believe more extreme change in how we deliver our lessons is in order so that students can have even more control and choice.  In a 21<sup>st</sup>-century model of learning, there is little room for teacher-fronted lessons and all students doing the same thing at the same time. So next time you plan your lesson, think about what you might be controlling too much and how you can relinquish control. Don’t be too concerned about students becoming too loud and the activities a bit messy. Productive messiness is good!</p>
  62. ]]></content:encoded>
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  65. <slash:comments>2</slash:comments>
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  70. <media:title type="html">isabelavb</media:title>
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  73. <item>
  74. <title>Ten tips for sustainable professional development &#8211; a balancing act</title>
  75. <link>https://isabelavillasboas.wordpress.com/2017/03/15/ten-tips-for-sustainable-professional-development-a-balancing-act/</link>
  76. <comments>https://isabelavillasboas.wordpress.com/2017/03/15/ten-tips-for-sustainable-professional-development-a-balancing-act/#comments</comments>
  78. <dc:creator><![CDATA[isabelavb]]></dc:creator>
  79. <pubDate>Thu, 16 Mar 2017 01:34:09 +0000</pubDate>
  80. <category><![CDATA[Professional development]]></category>
  81. <category><![CDATA[lifelong learning; continued professional development; work-life balance]]></category>
  82. <guid isPermaLink="false">http://isabelavillasboas.wordpress.com/?p=707</guid>
  83.  
  84. <description><![CDATA[If you are reading this post, you are likely to be a connected educator committed to life-long learning. As such, you are probably someone who, just like me, works many hours a day in your demanding English-teaching, coordinating, or managing job and, in your free time, engages in all or some of these activities: Read [&#8230;]]]></description>
  85. <content:encoded><![CDATA[<p>If you are reading this post, you are likely to be a connected educator committed to life-long learning. As such, you are probably someone who, just like me, works many hours a day in your demanding English-teaching, coordinating, or managing job and, in your free time, engages in all or some of these activities:</p>
  86. <ul>
  87. <li>Read professional materials, such as books, articles, and blogs.</li>
  88. <li>Interact online with other professionals.</li>
  89. <li>Write academic materials such as books, articles, and blog posts.</li>
  90. <li>Serve in a professional association such as TESOL, IATEFL, and BRAZ-TESOL.</li>
  91. <li>Participate in conferences.</li>
  92. <li>Present in conferences.</li>
  93. <li>Take face-to-face or online courses ranging from certificate-leading ones such as CELTA, DELTA, MA’s, and the like, to short-term courses in local institutions, online or MOOCs on Coursera, EdEX and other platforms.</li>
  94. <li>Review materials for publishers.</li>
  95. </ul>
  96. <p><span id="more-707"></span></p>
  97. <p>Engaging in all these types of activities beyond work can be daunting and lead professionals to feel so overwhelmed that they give up due to burnout. After all, we have one of the most demanding professions on the planet. It is very hard to find energy after work or on weekends to work on our professional development on top of everything we need to do for work, not to mention to strike a balance between this and our personal lives. It is even harder to sustain this for many, many years. While we do want to be accomplished professionals, we need first and foremost to be accomplished people, with healthy relationships with family and friends, fulfilling personal lives, and mental and physical health.</p>
  98. <p>Based on my own experience and my observations of other colleagues, here are some tips that may help you sustain your professional development efforts and achieve your goals in the many years to come, without compromising your personal lives:</p>
  99. <ol>
  100. <li>You need to decide how far YOU want to go and how much YOU want to dedicate to your professional development. Not everyone needs to do everything on my list above to be a successful professional. Make a choice in your life and make peace with it. If keeping abreast of new developments in your field by reading and attending events is enough for you, that’s fine. You don’t necessarily need to become a blogger or presenter. For some of us, this is a hobby that we prefer to engage in rather than cooking, for example. Others have other hobbies they would rather dedicate more time to. We also face different demands from our families, so not everyone can do all this all the time. What you also need to understand, though, is that the results you will obtain will be based on the efforts you chose to make. There are no miracles or short cuts!</li>
  101. </ol>
  102. <ol start="2">
  103. <li>After you decide how far you want to go, you need to establish priorities. No one with a full-time job can handle doing an MA, serving an association, writing for a blog, and presenting regularly in conferences at the same time, for instance. I was working on a book project in 2014, and the only time I had for this was weekends and holidays. I had to make the painful but wise decision not to attend the International BRAZ-TESOL Conference in João Pessoa that year. I would have gone crazy if I had. And when we go crazy, we make everyone around us go crazy too!</li>
  104. </ol>
  105. <ol start="3">
  106. <li>Having established your priorities, make a list of what you want to accomplish. For example, suppose you have decided to start a blog. You must stipulate how many posts a year you can realistically write and try to stick to your plan. If you decide that you want to start presenting in conferences, select the conferences you want to present in and start planning your talks way ahead. Personal circumstances can get in the way, and if you leave everything for the last minute, you might have problems. Always set realistic goals that fit your current reality. When your reality changes, set new goals. You can move slowly but firmly and achieve great results.</li>
  107. </ol>
  108. <ol start="4">
  109. <li>We have different stages in our lives and we need to respect them. As the old saying goes, Rome was not built in a day. I only started attending the national BRAZ-TESOL conference more regularly in 2004, when my younger daughter was 8. Before that, I prioritized spending the few days off I had in July with my family. As my daughters grew older and more independent, I managed to find more time to engage in professional development. When they were babies and toddlers, all I could manage to balance was work and them. There was no way I could also have dedicated time to what I do today. This didn’t condemn me to a secondary role in our field. Here I am, writing to you on this blog. There is a time for everything in life!</li>
  110. </ol>
  111. <ol start="5">
  112. <li>Find time to take care of your health, from eating habits to exercising. It is very easy to get so engaged in social media, blogs, videos, etc., and forget to eat properly and exercise. The long-term results can be devastating. Exercising stimulates your brain and gives you more energy. You end up producing more and better, without getting so tired. Make exercising a commitment, just like work. Even when I was working full-time and writing my doctorate thesis, I still found time to exercise, maybe less than usual, but at least some.</li>
  113. </ol>
  114. <ol start="6">
  115. <li>Learn to say no! Don’t take up more commitments and responsibilities than you can handle. The more you do, the more things you will be asked to do. This is the most difficult tip for me. I have the tendency to say yes to everything and then feel overwhelmed. I have been working on this for a while. Unfortunately, I know people who make commitments that they end up not fulfilling, so they also end up with a bad reputation. In the end, people are reluctant to work with them because they just want their names everywhere but don’t actually deliver.</li>
  116. </ol>
  117. <ol start="7">
  118. <li>Be sure to take a vacation, and when you do, really turn off. This is also very difficult for me. For example, I was on vacation from December 21 to January 20. I had to resist sitting at my computer to write my usual post on December 29, or to read the many blogs I usually follow, start working on my upcoming Tesol presentation, etc. But I knew I needed the rest. I was exhausted and I needed to clear my mind of any work-related topic. Maybe not everyone needs 30 days. At other moments in my life I didn’t need that long, but this time I did and now I am ready to produce a lot in 2017.</li>
  119. </ol>
  120. <ol start="8">
  121. <li>If you do not achieve your goals the first time around, do not give up. I have presented many times in the International Tesol Conference, but I have also had my proposals rejected many times as well. Had I given up after my first rejection, I would not have honed my skills as a presenter. Also, though I have published articles in journals, I have also had articles rejected. See failures as a learning opportunity. Social media makes us believe that our colleagues are always successful because we tend to share only our success stories, never our failures. Everybody fails. It is what you do with your failures that makes you grow or give up. Also, when you have a rich personal life, professional failures do not seem so huge because it is not your career that defines you.</li>
  122. </ol>
  123. <ol start="9">
  124. <li>Don’t expect never to get stressed or experience tensions. We all get stressed at work, and sometimes trying to find a balance between work and personal life leads to stress. I have faced tensions with my family due to my professional commitments, but we have always managed to work them out. We need constant re-gauging of how much time and energy we can spend here or there. You need to understand that stress is not always negative. It is all about how you deal with stress, and for this I recommend reading this article on  <a href="https://hbr.org/2016/11/why-some-people-get-burned-out-and-others-dont">why some people get burned out and others don’t,</a> Harvard Business Review.</li>
  125. </ol>
  126. <ol start="10">
  127. <li>If you are single, try to find a partner who will support your professional development efforts and understand that, while you do need to spend time with the family, there will also be times when you will have to turn your attention to reading, writing, traveling to conferences, etc. I’m not sure whether I would have achieved what I have if my husband hadn’t always been so supportive and encouraging. Perhaps I would due to my natural tenacity, but with much more unnecessary stress. If you are not and your partner is not so supportive, explain how important these off-hours activities are to you and compromise, always compromise.</li>
  128. </ol>
  129. <p>Remember that we only have one life to live. We want to do our job well, we want to be accomplished and recognized professionals, but we also want to be around the people we love and be fulfilled as whole persons. Personal fulfillment drives professional fulfillment and vice-versa. All the professionals I admire have interesting lives as well. Do you?</p>
  130. ]]></content:encoded>
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  133. <slash:comments>2</slash:comments>
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  138. <media:title type="html">isabelavb</media:title>
  139. </media:content>
  140. </item>
  141. <item>
  142. <title>Are you really teaching reading?</title>
  143. <link>https://isabelavillasboas.wordpress.com/2017/01/22/are-you-really-teaching-reading/</link>
  144. <comments>https://isabelavillasboas.wordpress.com/2017/01/22/are-you-really-teaching-reading/#respond</comments>
  146. <dc:creator><![CDATA[isabelavb]]></dc:creator>
  147. <pubDate>Sun, 22 Jan 2017 21:01:30 +0000</pubDate>
  148. <category><![CDATA[Reading]]></category>
  149. <category><![CDATA[genres]]></category>
  150. <category><![CDATA[intensive reading]]></category>
  151. <category><![CDATA[methodology]]></category>
  152. <category><![CDATA[reading strategies]]></category>
  153. <category><![CDATA[Teaching reading]]></category>
  154. <guid isPermaLink="false">http://isabelavillasboas.wordpress.com/?p=698</guid>
  155.  
  156. <description><![CDATA[&#160; In an integrated-skills curriculum, reading and writing can be easily neglected if curriculum developers and teachers do not make a conscious effort to focus on them explicitly and to teach them as skills on their own right, rather than mere reinforcement of grammar and vocabulary or a springboard for speaking. I have already discussed [&#8230;]]]></description>
  157. <content:encoded><![CDATA[<p>&nbsp;</p>
  158. <p><img data-attachment-id="701" data-permalink="https://isabelavillasboas.wordpress.com/2017/01/22/are-you-really-teaching-reading/reading/" data-orig-file="https://isabelavillasboas.files.wordpress.com/2017/01/reading.jpg" data-orig-size="5472,3648" data-comments-opened="1" data-image-meta="{&quot;aperture&quot;:&quot;0&quot;,&quot;credit&quot;:&quot;&quot;,&quot;camera&quot;:&quot;&quot;,&quot;caption&quot;:&quot;&quot;,&quot;created_timestamp&quot;:&quot;0&quot;,&quot;copyright&quot;:&quot;&quot;,&quot;focal_length&quot;:&quot;0&quot;,&quot;iso&quot;:&quot;0&quot;,&quot;shutter_speed&quot;:&quot;0&quot;,&quot;title&quot;:&quot;&quot;,&quot;orientation&quot;:&quot;0&quot;}" data-image-title="reading" data-image-description="" data-image-caption="" data-medium-file="https://isabelavillasboas.files.wordpress.com/2017/01/reading.jpg?w=300" data-large-file="https://isabelavillasboas.files.wordpress.com/2017/01/reading.jpg?w=510" class="alignnone size-full wp-image-701" src="https://isabelavillasboas.files.wordpress.com/2017/01/reading.jpg?w=510" alt="reading"   srcset="https://isabelavillasboas.files.wordpress.com/2017/01/reading.jpg 5472w, https://isabelavillasboas.files.wordpress.com/2017/01/reading.jpg?w=150&amp;h=100 150w, https://isabelavillasboas.files.wordpress.com/2017/01/reading.jpg?w=300&amp;h=200 300w, https://isabelavillasboas.files.wordpress.com/2017/01/reading.jpg?w=768&amp;h=512 768w, https://isabelavillasboas.files.wordpress.com/2017/01/reading.jpg?w=1024&amp;h=683 1024w" sizes="(max-width: 5472px) 100vw, 5472px" /></p>
  159. <p>In an integrated-skills curriculum, reading and writing can be easily neglected if curriculum developers and teachers do not make a conscious effort to focus on them explicitly and to teach them as skills on their own right, rather than mere reinforcement of grammar and vocabulary or a springboard for speaking. I have already discussed the teaching of writing in two of my posts this year, so this time I will address the teaching of reading, with a focus on intensive reading*.</p>
  160. <p><span id="more-698"></span></p>
  161. <p>As a program superintendent and teacher developer, I observe an average of fifteen teachers a year, most of whom are in the second semester in my institution. Most are also novice teachers, with an average of two to three years of experience. Not always do I get to observe a lesson on reading, but when I do, teachers’ lesson plans often lack the necessary focus on reading skills and strategies. Below is a rough description of what I generally see:</p>
  162. <p><em>For a lead-in, the teacher opens up a discussion on the topic of the reading. With a view to integrating skills and activating students’ schemata, the teacher brings a video on the topic of the reading and shows it to the class. Sometimes this video contains from 30 to 50 percent of the information that will be presented in the text to be read. A discussion ensues, and from twenty to thirty minutes is spent on the pre-reading stage. After that, the teacher asks students to open their books and presents the text. Usually the lesson plan does not include an analysis of the title, the pictures that accompany the text, and its format, to identify its genre and predict content. However, teachers end up doing this because of our interaction during the pre-observation meeting. Despite our long conversations on the importance of teaching reading, teachers will rush through the tasks proposed by the course book, eager to do something “more fun”. Sometimes students answer the while-reading item – usually related to reading for the gist – before they read because the information has already been provided to them. While the students are reading, the teacher walks around the room rather impatiently, worried that he or she is not busy enough. Students sometimes stop the teacher to ask vocabulary questions. Some teachers answer right away, others interrupt the other students’ reading and have them answer, while very few tell the student to try to understand the main idea first and that vocabulary will be dealt with later. Students may or may not read a second time to answer the questions related to reading for specific information and language analysis (bottom-up processing), and the teacher quickly moves on to the post-reading stage, focused either on deriving grammar or vocabulary from the reading for intensive study or on speaking. The reading itself ends up taking a small proportion of the reading lesson, as the pre and the post-reading tasks gain more prominence, and students leave the class perhaps having acquired new knowledge on an interesting topic, but not having advanced in their ability to read texts in English.</em></p>
  163. <p>According to Nation (2009), an effective intensive reading lesson has to prepare students to be successful in their reading of future texts. “How does today’s teaching makes tomorrow’s text easier?” he asks (p. 26). Thus, the teacher should focus on strategies that can be used across texts, not with one single type of text. These strategies include previewing, setting a purpose for reading, predicting, posing questions, connecting to background knowledge, paying attention to text structure, guessing words from context, critiquing, and reflecting on the text. Also, focusing explicitly on the distinguishing features of the text genre helps students learn how to predict fixed patterns when they read future texts of the same genre. Some of these features are types of grammatical constructions commonly used, discourse markers, register, vocabulary, etc.</p>
  164. <p>Taking into consideration Nation’s recommendations and those provided by other renowned authors on teaching reading (ZhaoHong Han and Anderson, 2009; Grabe, 2002,2010), as well as my experience as a teacher and teacher developer, here are some tips on how to teach a successful intensive reading lesson that will help students advance in their reading skills and strategies:</p>
  165. <p>– For the pre-reading stage, prepare an activity to activate students’ schemata, but make sure you don’t spoil the reading by already presenting information that will be in it. Make sure this part of the lesson doesn’t take longer than the reading lesson itself. The pre-reading stage is not meant to pre-teach anything or to spoon-feed the students.</p>
  166. <p>– When presenting the reading, have students explore its format. What’s the title? Are there subtitles? What can you predict from the pictures? What would you like to know about this topic? Do not confirm their answers; just jot them down. This is the previewing and predicting stage of the lesson.</p>
  167. <p>– Give students a while-reading task, that is, set a purpose for reading. It can be to check which predictions were right, for example. Have them focus on performing this task and this task only, not on details at this point. Let them read for the gist (top-down processing). Explain that they will sometimes need to read a text for the general idea and will not have a dictionary or a teacher beside them, so they need to practice reading under these circumstances. Adults, especially, need this kind of explaining.</p>
  168. <p>– Sit down and let them read! Don’t distract students by walking around or fidgeting. Allow them to engage in their own personal interaction with the text. Get out of the way!</p>
  169. <p>– After going over the main idea and answering the big question, focus on reading for details. Many course books will combine top-down and bottom-up processing activities, but if yours doesn’t, add this stage. Give your students a chance to read again, this second time with a focus on reading for details and to interpret the graphophonic, syntactic, and semantic features present in the text. Bottom-up processing is as important as top-down processing. According to Grabe (2009), the almost exclusive focus on top-down, schema-based approaches to reading instruction emphasized in communicative approaches is insufficient to develop effective readers.</p>
  170. <p>– Make sure students understand the information in the text before you ask them to critique it. Many times, we go for the discussion of the text before its full, accurate interpretation. Integrating skills is highly recommended, but don’t move to the discussion phase until you have explored the text for language-focused learning.</p>
  171. <p>– Don’t provide word meanings to students. Teach them how to try to guess them from the context. Sometimes they can guess from clues such as prefixes and suffixes, or words of Latin origin. If they can’t guess, have them look words up in the dictionary. Also teach them how to prioritize and select the words that are crucial for understanding the text and ignore the others. Nation suggests ignoring or dealing quickly with low-frequency words and focusing on the high-frequency ones. This improves students’ reading efficiency. You can limit the number of words they can look up so they can learn to distinguish essential and non-essential words.</p>
  172. <p>– Even if your course book does not propose this, if you have the time, choose at least one distinguishing feature of the text genre to focus on. In narratives, for instance, you can focus on adverbs of time. Don’t approach this from a merely grammatical point of view, but rather, at the discourse level.</p>
  173. <p>– At the end of the reading lesson, ask your students what they learned that day that can be applied when they read another text. Be explicit about the strategies focused on and why they are useful.</p>
  174. <p>If you follow all or most of the steps above, you can be sure that you have really taught a reading lesson – not a conversation lesson based on a text, not a grammar lesson with a text as context, and not a writing lesson with a text as a model (these are legitimate uses of texts as well) – but a true reading class. Having done so, then you can use the text for whichever other purpose you find suitable, even for students to read out loud to practice pronunciation, but please not before that!</p>
  175. <p>I will close this post with a quote from one of my favorite authors on the teaching of reading:</p>
  176. <blockquote><p><em>Controlling the formal aspects of language use in reading and writing is a way out from subordinate and marginalized uses of language. (…) Leaving language instruction at an intuitive and ‘mystical’ level of ‘natural language acquisition’ may be easy for the teacher and may make some students feel good, but it leads to disempowerment. </em>(Grabe 2002, p. 297).</p></blockquote>
  177. <p>&nbsp;</p>
  178. <p>*Extensive reading and reading for fluency are also crucial elements of an EFL curriculum, but they’re not the focus of this post.</p>
  179. <p>&nbsp;</p>
  180. <p>References:</p>
  181. <p>ZhaoHong Han &amp; Neil J. Anderson, Editors, (2009). <strong>Second Language Reading Research and Instruction – Crossing the Boundaries.</strong>  Ann Arbor, Michigan:  University of Michigan Press.</p>
  182. <p>Grabe, W. (2002). Dilemmas for the Development of Second Langauge Reading Abilities. In J. C. Richards and W. A. Renandya (Eds). <strong>Methodology in Language Teaching – An Anthology of Current Practice. </strong> New York, NY: Cambridge University Press.</p>
  183. <p>Grabe, W. (2010). <strong>Reading in a Second Language</strong>.  Cambridge University Press.</p>
  184. <p>Nation, I.S.P. (2009). <strong>Teaching EFL Reading and Writing</strong>.  New York, NY:  Routledge.</p>
  185. ]]></content:encoded>
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  188. <slash:comments>0</slash:comments>
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  193. <media:title type="html">isabelavb</media:title>
  194. </media:content>
  195.  
  196. <media:content url="https://isabelavillasboas.files.wordpress.com/2017/01/reading.jpg" medium="image">
  197. <media:title type="html">reading</media:title>
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  200. <item>
  201. <title>Thirty years in ELT &#8211; some thoughts about then and now</title>
  202. <link>https://isabelavillasboas.wordpress.com/2016/12/18/thirty-years-in-elt-some-thoughts-about-then-and-now/</link>
  203. <comments>https://isabelavillasboas.wordpress.com/2016/12/18/thirty-years-in-elt-some-thoughts-about-then-and-now/#respond</comments>
  205. <dc:creator><![CDATA[isabelavb]]></dc:creator>
  206. <pubDate>Sun, 18 Dec 2016 12:36:57 +0000</pubDate>
  207. <category><![CDATA[Methodology]]></category>
  208. <category><![CDATA[methods; technology; history of ELT]]></category>
  209. <guid isPermaLink="false">http://isabelavillasboas.wordpress.com/?p=695</guid>
  210.  
  211. <description><![CDATA[My passion for English began when I was a child and lived in the U.S. for three years while my parents went to graduate school. Upon coming back to Brazil, I was enrolled in a traditional language institute in Brasilia, Casa Thomas Jefferson (CTJ). There I went from the intermediate to the advanced level and [&#8230;]]]></description>
  212. <content:encoded><![CDATA[<p>My passion for English began when I was a child and lived in the U.S. for three years while my parents went to graduate school. Upon coming back to Brazil, I was enrolled in a traditional language institute in Brasilia, Casa Thomas Jefferson (CTJ). There I went from the intermediate to the advanced level and then took several ESP courses until I was old enough to take the Teacher Training Course. It’s not that I wanted to be a teacher. I just wanted to keep up with my English. What I really wanted was to be a journalist, and that’s what I majored in.</p>
  213. <p><span id="more-695"></span></p>
  214. <p>However, a Sunday evening in August of 1986 changed the whole course of my life. I was starting my fourth semester at university and also the fourth semester of the six-semester Teacher Training Course at CTJ. I got a phone call from my teacher, Katy Cox, asking if I wanted a job as a teacher at CTJ. I loved English, I loved CTJ, and I could use some pocket money, so I said “yes”. However, my plan was to major in Journalism and get a job as a journalist. The teaching job was just temporary…</p>
  215. <p>Well, here I am thirty years later writing about how I became an EFL teacher and reminiscing about then and now in my institution and in the profession. Here are some rather random thoughts:</p>
  216. <ul>
  217. <li>When I began, the courses were usually more intensive, with more contact hours per week. All the six semesters in the basic and intermediate courses at CTJ were six hours a week. As a result, teachers had fewer groups, which was definitely an advantage for them. However, we catered to a very select group that could afford the time and the money. Very few people had access to a private language program because it was very expensive, costing nearly as much as a regular school’s tuition. Nowadays, the contact hours a week in our courses are fewer, but more people have access to our program because the tuition is lower, too, comparing to the past.</li>
  218. </ul>
  219. <ul>
  220. <li>Competition to get into university wasn’t as fierce, and high school students had more time to dedicate to their English studies. I can’t imagine current high school students writing as many compositions, reading as many short stories, and doing as much homework as my students did thirty years ago. Our courses were definitely more <a href="https://demandhighelt.wordpress.com/">demand-high</a> than what I see today, mainly because our students had more time to dedicate to their English studies.</li>
  221. </ul>
  222. <ul>
  223. <li>At that time, there weren’t skills-integrated materials in American English for advanced levels. The adult series only had six levels. For the advanced course, we had to use textbooks focusing on specific skills, or a combination of textbooks. Some of these books were <em>Steps in Composition</em>, Marcella Frank’s <em>Modern English</em>, <em>Great Ideas</em>, <em>Building Understanding – A Thematic Approach to Reading Comprehension</em> and <em>Focus on Grammar</em>. <em>Move Up</em> was the first skills-integrated textbook we used for the advanced level.</li>
  224. </ul>
  225. <ul>
  226. <li>Teachers seemed to be more worried about developing their English than now. We actually had heated grammar discussions in the teachers’ lounge, and if you didn’t own Swan’s <em>Practical English Usage</em> and refer to it once in a while you were not considered a decent person. Everyone knew grammar terminology deeply and was proud, maybe even too proud, to display this knowledge. I don’t see this going on anymore. I hope it does and I just don’t see it…</li>
  227. </ul>
  228. <p><em> </em></p>
  229. <ul>
  230. <li><em> </em>Course books were black and white and had few pictures. The only extra components were the workbook and a set of cassettes, and having students wait until we found the right track was a tense moment in class! You see, we didn’t have our own cassettes; we had to share and we didn’t necessarily stop at the same track. With the communicative movement, publishers began producing resource packs with games and communicative activities. Soon there was the need for video cassettes for additional authentic-like listening practice. The popularization of personal computers brought the CD ROMs. Then came de CDs and DVDs, the Internet and the web 1.0 websites, followed by web 2.0 sites, blogs, learning management systems, apps… you name it. And publishers have to produce all this for basically the same price as the black-and-white course books from 30 years ago. What is even more mind-boggling is the fact that the students who finished the Advanced Course 30 years ago didn’t know less English than the ones today, who have so many more resources, judging from international exam scores then and now.</li>
  231. </ul>
  232. <p><em> </em></p>
  233. <ul>
  234. <li>Getting a hold of authentic listening materials was a challenge. We used a lot of songs because they were readily available (if you had the cassette, of course, with the song probably recorded from the radio). However, it wasn’t easy to find the lyrics, so we spent hours listening to the song and stopping after each line to write down the words. I once had the chance to record a series of TV commercials in the U.S. and gave a presentation about how to use them in class. This video cassette was like gold in the teachers’ lounge! Oh, but we didn’t have a video cassette player in every classroom. We had to book the VCR Room. Now it is so easy to find and download videos to use in class.</li>
  235. </ul>
  236. <p><em> </em></p>
  237. <ul>
  238. <li>Novice teachers probably take images for granted now because they are ubiquitous. We can find images for anything we need. In the past, you could easily identify an English teacher when you saw someone ripping ads from magazines in beauty salons and doctor’s offices. Course developers spent a significant amount of their time finding magazine pictures for their flashcards or drawing the pictures themselves if they were talented. They also had to count on the help of their enthusiastic peers to color these drawings. Because we needed sets for different branches, we had to Xerox the drawings and color all of them. You didn’t think there were Xerox machines that made colored copies at that time, did you?</li>
  239. </ul>
  240. <p><em> </em></p>
  241. <ul>
  242. <li><em> </em>Considering everything mentioned above, I feel that because we faced so many limitations regarding materials and resources, we were somehow more flexible, more capable of improvising and dealing with unexpected situations than teachers seem to be now. The lack of abundant resources gave more room for incidental learning, for dealing with what came up during the class, rather than with a pre-defined plan with so many slips, videos, apps and games. I don’t mean by this to say that we should not use these resources, but maybe they have taken up too much space and time in our classrooms and left too little for the learner. I see teachers bringing to class their slides with everything they want to do, every word they want to say, and everything they would have written on the board, and then they never use the board at all. Student-generated content &#8211; such as words they asked about, main mistakes they made, or other types of things that came up in class &#8211;  is not registered on the board at all.</li>
  243. </ul>
  244. <ul>
  245. <li>Most importantly, while the materials have changed significantly and now there is new and more varied technology to optimize our work and boost students’ motivation and, hopefully, outcomes, the essence of a good teacher’s class has not changed, and Earl Stevick’s famous statement is still so true: <strong>“Success depends less on materials, techniques, and linguistic analysis, and more on what goes on inside and between the people in the classroom.” </strong>This has not changed and I don’t think it ever will because learning is primarily a socio-interactive activity, and we cannot separate cognition from affect, so students will learn effectively in an environment where they feel safe and that stimulates them cognitively and emotionally.</li>
  246. </ul>
  247. <p>What about you, my friends who have been teaching for as long as I have. What are your thoughts about then and now? Please add them to my list in your comments.</p>
  248. ]]></content:encoded>
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  256. <media:title type="html">isabelavb</media:title>
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  259. <item>
  260. <title>Should we vent about our students?</title>
  261. <link>https://isabelavillasboas.wordpress.com/2016/11/05/should-we-vent-about-our-students/</link>
  262. <comments>https://isabelavillasboas.wordpress.com/2016/11/05/should-we-vent-about-our-students/#comments</comments>
  264. <dc:creator><![CDATA[isabelavb]]></dc:creator>
  265. <pubDate>Sat, 05 Nov 2016 21:21:52 +0000</pubDate>
  266. <category><![CDATA[Classroom management]]></category>
  267. <category><![CDATA[Professional development]]></category>
  268. <category><![CDATA[venting]]></category>
  269. <guid isPermaLink="false">http://isabelavillasboas.wordpress.com/?p=691</guid>
  270.  
  271. <description><![CDATA[Not long ago I read a blog post in Edutopia  by Jason Deehan about whether venting about students should be banned. What motivated the author to write the post was the fact that he had come across a comment about a school that discouraged teachers from venting about their students because they felt that it [&#8230;]]]></description>
  272. <content:encoded><![CDATA[<p style="text-align:center;"><a href="http://www.richmondshare.com.br/wp-content/uploads/complaining-154204_1280.png" rel="attachment wp-att-4912"><img class="alignnone size-medium wp-image-4912" src="https://i0.wp.com/www.richmondshare.com.br/wp-content/uploads/complaining-154204_1280-150x300.png" alt="complaining-154204_1280" width="150" height="300" /></a></p>
  273. <p>Not long ago I read a blog post in <a href="http://www.edutopia.org/discussion/should-venting-about-students-be-banned?utm_source=facebook&amp;utm_medium=socialflow">Edutopia</a>  by Jason Deehan about whether venting about students should be banned. What motivated the author to write the post was the fact that he had come across a comment about a school that discouraged teachers from venting about their students because they felt that it was a matter of respect, of not talking about students behind their back. At first, he was shocked about the idea, for venting is a teacher staple just like drinking too much coffee. But after giving it more thought and doing some research, he found that the downside of venting might outweigh its positive aspects. Venting gives the &#8220;venter&#8221; a false sense of achievement, and when the &#8220;venter&#8221; gets better and better at it, it may lead to more anger in similar situations in the future. Jason is not completely against venting, though. He just suggests that venting should be coupled with problem-solving strategies so that we get off the treadmill of simply complaining.</p>
  274. <p><span id="more-691"></span></p>
  275. <p>Doing a little more research on this topic, I came across a <a href="http://spedphilosopher.blogspot.com.br/2009/04/when-teachers-vent.html">post</a> by Kevin Currie-Knight about why teachers vent. Kevin is totally in favor of venting, for a number of reasons. He mentions that teaching is one of the most complex professions in the world, if not the most complex. We do our job in isolation from any other peers, and when something goes wrong in our class, we have no one to talk to immediately to help us solve our problem. Since we can’t lose our cool in front of our students, we need to have someone to talk to at the end of the day, someone who will truly understand our problems. We feel better when we realize that we are not the only ones who are having difficulties motivating the unmotivated student or getting teenagers to behave in class.</p>
  276. <p>Further research on the topic led me to Michael Linsin’s <a href="http://www.smartclassroommanagement.com/2015/12/05/3-ways-you-should-never-vent-about-students/">post</a> about three ways we should never vent about our students.  Though he acknowledges that venting is natural because it relieves stress and reminds us that other teachers have similar problems and frustrations, venting can damage our students’ chances of success. The first way he thinks we should never vent about our students is by name because our comment can be repeated to others and can spread in ways that we cannot control. The second way is personally, showing hate or dislike for students,  because this can solidify the idea in our mind and we will end up revealing this to the student in one way or another.  We should talk about our frustrations regarding the situation, not the person, without demonstrating personal dislike. Finally, we should never vent about our students freely, in the hallways, offices, or staff lounges, for we never know who is listening to us.</p>
  277. <p>Michael Linsin also differentiates venting from complaining. He believes that teachers who openly complain about their students are not respected by their peers, never take responsibility for solving the problems they are always complaining about and, thus, never improve as teachers. Venting privately, on the other hand, is a way of expressing our feelings and frustrations, as long as we respect the dignity of our students.</p>
  278. <p>While I do agree that teachers need to vent once in a while, especially when having faced a particularly difficult situation, I also think that there is a fine line between venting and complaining.  It is one thing to vent to a peer we trust and who can give us a helping hand, but venting in the teachers’ lounge, for everyone to hear, is a whole different story. The major problem I see in venting about students – especially in my English-language-teaching-institute context in which students change teachers every semester – is that we may end up labeling our students and perpetuating a fixed mindset about them.  When the next semester comes, the new teacher who has heard us in the teachers’ lounge will already see the students from a preconceived perspective.  Then we take away these students’ chances of having a fresh start.</p>
  279. <p>I also believe that when we vent too much about a particular student or group, we also end up treating them differently, even when they are not giving us trouble.  This leads them to behave differently, too, starting a vicious cycle. We all know about the <a href="http://teaching.monster.com/benefits/articles/10304-the-self-fulfilling-prophecy-your-students-i-knew-you-could-do-it">self-fulfilling prophecy</a>:  students may become what we expect them to become. When you treat students like they are incapable of learning and/or behaving, they might end up becoming incapable of learning and/or behaving. Finally, just like <a href="http://curmudgucation.blogspot.com.br/2016/06/to-lounge-or-not-to-lounge-venting.html">Peter Greene</a>, I am completely against any type of venting that involves “othering” students, such as referring to them as “dumb” or “jerks”.  Being unkind is always a bad thing, says Greene. And honestly, making jokes about the mistakes students make in the process of learning a second language doesn’t seem appropriate to me, though I know that some see it as just a way of having some fun.</p>
  280. <p>Some things are better said than done, though, and all of us have probably said things about our students in the heat of the moment that we regretted minutes later. As Greene points out, if we have never found teaching frustrating, we are either not doing it right or we just don’t care about what we do. The problem is when venting becomes a habit or when it disrespects the dignity of those we are in charge of looking after.</p>
  281. ]]></content:encoded>
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  284. <slash:comments>2</slash:comments>
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  289. <media:title type="html">isabelavb</media:title>
  290. </media:content>
  291.  
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  293. <media:title type="html">complaining-154204_1280</media:title>
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  296. <item>
  297. <title>Five Reasons Why We Should Talk About Writing</title>
  298. <link>https://isabelavillasboas.wordpress.com/2016/09/18/five-reasons-why-we-should-talk-about-writing/</link>
  299. <comments>https://isabelavillasboas.wordpress.com/2016/09/18/five-reasons-why-we-should-talk-about-writing/#respond</comments>
  301. <dc:creator><![CDATA[isabelavb]]></dc:creator>
  302. <pubDate>Sun, 18 Sep 2016 22:02:17 +0000</pubDate>
  303. <category><![CDATA[Writing]]></category>
  304. <category><![CDATA[Assessment]]></category>
  305. <category><![CDATA[critical thinking]]></category>
  306. <category><![CDATA[writing]]></category>
  307. <guid isPermaLink="false">http://isabelavillasboas.wordpress.com/?p=687</guid>
  308.  
  309. <description><![CDATA[In my last post, I wrote about why it seems to me that the topic &#8220;teaching writing&#8221; is avoided in ELT conferences. Now I&#8217;m going to mention why I believe it is a topic that should receive more attention, and I&#8217;m going to do so by relating it to some of the hot topics in [&#8230;]]]></description>
  310. <content:encoded><![CDATA[<p style="text-align:center;"><a href="http://www.richmondshare.com.br/wp-content/uploads/writing-3.jpg" rel="attachment wp-att-4860"><img class="alignnone wp-image-4860" src="https://i0.wp.com/www.richmondshare.com.br/wp-content/uploads/writing-3-300x222.jpg" alt="writing 3" width="377" height="278" /></a></p>
  311. <p>In my last post, I wrote about why it seems to me that the topic &#8220;teaching writing&#8221; is avoided in ELT conferences. Now I&#8217;m going to mention why I believe it is a topic that should receive more attention, and I&#8217;m going to do so by relating it to some of the hot topics in the last Braz-Tesol conference and others I&#8217;ve attended recently.</p>
  312. <p><span id="more-687"></span></p>
  313. <ol>
  314. <li>Critical thinking</li>
  315. </ol>
  316. <p>Bloom&#8217;s revised taxonomy (Krathwohl, 2002) has been repeatedly mentioned in the past few years, and it was no different in the Braz-Tesol conference. It is indeed important that we carry out activities that develop higher order thinking skills, such as analyzing, evaluating, and creating. Writing plays an integral role in these three processes. When students compose texts in different genres, after having gone through the process of analyzing the given genre, generating ideas and planning their writing, drafting, engaging in self and peer assessment, and rewriting, the highest levels of critical thinking are involved. Thus, a well-developed writing lesson is crucial in every classroom in which developing critical thinking is a goal.</p>
  317. <ol start="2">
  318. <li>Bilingual education</li>
  319. </ol>
  320. <p>This was arguably the hottest topic in the conference, first because we need to clarify what bilingual education really is, and second because we need to find effective strategies to integrate content and language development. CLIL (Content-language Integrated Learning) is about developing academic literacy, and a major component is writing in the different content areas. Students need to learn to write lab reports, book reviews, essays, summaries, and the like in order to be fully academically literate. Knowing how to implement the genre approach to ESL/EFL writing is, thus, a skill every teacher in a bilingual education context needs to develop.</p>
  321. <ol start="3">
  322. <li>Technology and 21st Century skills</li>
  323. </ol>
  324. <p>Besides critical thinking, there are other 21st Century skills that need attention in every classroom, such as collaboration, communication, and creativity. Again, well developed writing assignments can easily tap into these skills. Meaningful, authentic topics, written for real-life purposes, can give students a genuine sense of communication. Students can work collaboratively on pieces of writing using google docs and other resources, as well as give feedback to each other using technology. They can write scripts that then become videos produced either individually or collaboratively, and they can subsequently provide written feedback on each other&#8217;s videos. There are countless creative writing activities that teachers can carry out in their classrooms. A good start is to read <a href="Why%20talk%20about%20writing">Alan Maley&#8217;s article</a> on the British Council website.</p>
  325. <ol start="4">
  326. <li>Assessment</li>
  327. </ol>
  328. <p>Another topic that was covered in a great number of sessions in the 15th Braz-Tesol International Conference was assessment, with a special focus on formative and authentic assessment. Process writing is the quintessential example of formative assessment because it allows students the opportunity to receive feedback from peers and the teacher and revise their writing, ideally as many times as necessary. It is a true example of assessment for learning rather than of learning. Besides, by way of writing assignments, one can assess students&#8217; language development in a much more authentic manner than with selected-response or fill-in-the-blanks exercises.  Performance tasks assess learners&#8217; authentic production in either speaking or writing. It is no wonder that the Internet-based TOEFL assesses grammar use by way of speaking and writing activities, rather than discrete test items.</p>
  329. <ol start="5">
  330. <li>Developing agency in non-native speakers</li>
  331. </ol>
  332. <p>Three of the Braz-Tesol plenary speakers addressed this topic in one way or another. Just as non-native English teachers need to negotiate their status in the ELT community, so do non-native speakers in other careers. They need to be empowered and to develop agency. Writing is a powerful tool for this. People who can write effectively in their own language and in a second language, especially an international one such as English, will certainly have more access to academic and professional opportunities than those who can’t. They will also be able to advocate for their rights. Besides all the other genres exemplified above, English learners need to be able to respond to blog posts or news articles that they find offensive or that they want to support, or complain about services and demand compensations, for example. In addition, they will be more successful in their careers if they build professional learning communities, and writing in English will certainly play an important role. Think about the most well-known ELT professionals in Brazil. Even if they don’t publish academic articles or books, they all write for blogs, comment on other people’s posts, and post on social media, and they all do this very effectively.</p>
  333. <p>Writing effectively in a variety of genres is a more powerful gatekeeper than we think. Let’s make sure we do not prevent our students from mastering this very powerful communication skill.</p>
  334. <p>Reference:</p>
  335. <p>Krathwohl, D. (2002). A revision of Bloom’s taxonomy: An overview. Theory Into Practice, 41(4), 212-218.</p>
  336. ]]></content:encoded>
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  344. <media:title type="html">isabelavb</media:title>
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  346.  
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  348. <media:title type="html">writing 3</media:title>
  349. </media:content>
  350. </item>
  351. <item>
  352. <title>Why don&#8217;t we talk about writing?</title>
  353. <link>https://isabelavillasboas.wordpress.com/2016/08/11/why-dont-we-talk-about-writing/</link>
  354. <comments>https://isabelavillasboas.wordpress.com/2016/08/11/why-dont-we-talk-about-writing/#comments</comments>
  356. <dc:creator><![CDATA[isabelavb]]></dc:creator>
  357. <pubDate>Thu, 11 Aug 2016 13:52:04 +0000</pubDate>
  358. <category><![CDATA[Writing]]></category>
  359. <category><![CDATA[second language writing]]></category>
  360. <category><![CDATA[teacher development]]></category>
  361. <guid isPermaLink="false">http://isabelavillasboas.wordpress.com/?p=683</guid>
  362.  
  363. <description><![CDATA[The fabulous 15th Braz-TESOL International Conference ended almost a month ago and I am still processing all the information I acquired in the many presentations I attended during the event. The program was varied both in terms of topics and presenters, and everything I chose to watch was meaningful in one way or another. I [&#8230;]]]></description>
  364. <content:encoded><![CDATA[<p style="text-align:center;"><a href="http://www.richmondshare.com.br/wp-content/uploads/writing-books.jpg" rel="attachment wp-att-4717"><img loading="lazy" class="alignnone size-medium wp-image-4717" src="https://i0.wp.com/www.richmondshare.com.br/wp-content/uploads/writing-books-271x300.jpg" alt="writing books" width="271" height="300" /></a></p>
  365. <p>The fabulous 15<sup>th</sup> Braz-TESOL International Conference ended almost a month ago and I am still processing all the information I acquired in the many presentations I attended during the event. The program was varied both in terms of topics and presenters, and everything I chose to watch was meaningful in one way or another. I myself gave a talk, together with my colleague and CTJ course supervisor Silvia Caldas, on how we adopt and adapt the process-genre approach to writing in our context.</p>
  366. <p><span id="more-683"></span></p>
  367. <p>We had a wonderful group of participants in our talk, but the room wasn’t crowded. I had warned Silvia that this would probably happen because it is not the first time that I present on the topic of writing in Braz-TESOL conferences and my experience has been consistent: there aren’t many participants, but the quality of participation is always rewarding. The first thought that comes to mind is that the low attendance might be because I’m not such a good presenter and this is the reason why I don’t get such a large audience. Well, this is not necessarily true because when I present on other topics, the result is different, which leads me to conclude that it is the topic – writing – that is not so attractive.</p>
  368. <p>Analyzing the Braz-TESOL Conference program, I realized that there were only four talks or workshops categorized as “writing”, a fifth one about teaching online writing but under the category “educational technology”, and a sixth one on peer correction strategies but categorized as “applied linguistics” because it was a research report. I attended some of them, and they weren’t packed either. Thus, I believe I can safely say writing is not such a popular topic in ELT in Brazil nowadays.</p>
  369. <p>Why is this so? Why don’t teachers like to talk about writing? Here are some reasons I have heard from peers to whom I’ve posed this question, followed by my thoughts on them:</p>
  370. <ul>
  371. <li>Teachers don’t give due importance to writing because they themselves don’t write much.</li>
  372. </ul>
  373. <p>It is true that not only teachers but people in general write very little these days. Actually, I don’t know if it is only these days or if it has always been like this.  Besides lesson plans, reports on students’ performance, and a few professional and personal e-mails, and social media posts here and there, how much else do teachers have to write on a daily basis after all? And if they don’t have to write much, they also think their students won’t have to write much either.</p>
  374. <p>However, it is the ability to express ideas clearly in writing and catch the readers’ attention that has led many teachers to advance in their careers and become well-known in their professional learning communities by way of blogs and conference presentations. In order to be accepted as a presenter in a major conference, one has to be able to write an effective presentation proposal, with coherence, cohesion, and correct use of language. In addition, all teacher development certificates and degrees require a great amount of writing from teachers. In all these cases, writing can be either a barrier or an advantage, depending on the teacher’s writing skills.  Thus, teachers who want to continue advancing in their career should consider it important to write in the language that they teach and should make it a point to continue developing as writers.</p>
  375. <ul>
  376. <li>It’s very difficult to teach writing in the EFL classroom because students don’t like it.</li>
  377. </ul>
  378. <p>Indeed, my methodology guru Douglas Brown (1994) states that writing is a difficult skill to teach because it is culturally-acquired, rather than species-specific, and there is great variability in the extent to which it is fully acquired. However, if it is difficult to teach writing, shouldn’t it be the other way around, that is, because it is a difficult skill to teach, there should be more people presenting on writing and more people attending these presentations? Why do we avoid talking about writing?</p>
  379. <p>We also need to consider the root of the problem: the main reason why students don’t like writing is because they find the task daunting. They don’t know what to write and how to do it. It doesn’t have to be like this, though. A well planned writing lesson, with a focus on all the stages of the writing process and explicit teaching of the rhetorical and linguistic features of the genre students will have to write, will certainly make writing more palatable to students. When they feel confident about what to write and how to do it, students begin to see writing in a different way and to value it, especially if the tasks are based on their current and future real-life needs and this is explicitly shown to them.</p>
  380. <p>Not learning more about writing because students don’t like it leads teachers to teach writing ineffectively, which leads students not to like writing and also write ineffectively, creating a vicious cycle.</p>
  381. <ul>
  382. <li>Students (especially teenagers) don’t have to do much writing in EFL anyway, so why give much emphasis to it in the skills-integrated classroom?</li>
  383. </ul>
  384. <p>I have heard again and again that nowadays teens don’t write anymore; they only do texting or voice/video recording. This might be true for some teens, but how about bloggers and vloggers? The former certainly have to write and so do the latter, who probably write scripts or at least outlines of what they will record.  The ability to organize ideas both in writing and in speaking and to engage their audience is what makes these social influencers succeed so much. Isn’t this what students learn when they write?</p>
  385. <p>Besides, when we are learning a language at a younger age, we don’t know yet the purposes for which we will have to use that language in the future. However, we need to acquire the necessary skills to use the language in a variety of formal and informal settings, for personal, professional and academic purposes. A teenager is not learning English only to be able to use English as a teenager. In a few years, they might have to write college and/or job applications, statements of purpose, formal e-mails and a whole host of other genres. Even adults who are learning English only for personal reasons, for travel and leisure, might find themselves in the future writing an e-mail of complaint or a hotel or restaurant review.</p>
  386. <p>My older daughter finished the advanced course and got her certificate of proficiency in English at the age of 14. Even at this young age, she had to write formal essays and other types of genres. At that time, she didn’t understand why she had to write all this. Today she writes papers only in English for her Master’s program here in Brazil,  and she is grateful that she was ready to write academic English when she had to, rather than have to acquire this skill only now, together with all of her other academic demands.</p>
  387. <p>Just as it can be for teachers, writing is a gatekeeper in many professions. Those who can write well in English have a great advantage. Give your students this advantage!</p>
  388. <ul>
  389. <li>Writing can only be taught fully and effectively in a writing course or in an exam-prep course, not in a “regular” EFL course. Thus, writing teachers and exam-prep teachers are the ones who should be talking about writing.</li>
  390. </ul>
  391. <p>Harmer (2004, 31) states that focus on writing can range from a mere “backup” for grammar teaching to a major syllabus strand in its own right. Maybe many programs across Brazil use writing as a back-up for grammar teaching and do not focus on writing for writing, only on writing for learning.  The fact that most course books give little emphasis to writing and rarely present complete writing lessons, with all the stages of the writing process, especially planning and generating ideas, and a focus on different genres, is probably proof that this is not what most programs want.</p>
  392. <p>However, it is possible to teach writing as a skill in its own right in a skills-integrated program and make it meaningful to students. This is exactly what we should be talking about more in conferences and elsewhere.</p>
  393. <p>In my next blog post, I will focus on why we should talk about writing. Before that, though, do you have other thoughts on why we don’t talk about writing? I’d love to hear from you!</p>
  394. <p>Brown, H. D. (1994). <em>Teaching by principles: An interactive approach to language pedagogy.</em> White Plains, NY: Pearson Education.</p>
  395. <p>Harmer, J. (2004). <em>How to teach writing</em>. Essex, UK: Pearson Education Limited.</p>
  396. ]]></content:encoded>
  398. <wfw:commentRss>https://isabelavillasboas.wordpress.com/2016/08/11/why-dont-we-talk-about-writing/feed/</wfw:commentRss>
  399. <slash:comments>2</slash:comments>
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  404. <media:title type="html">isabelavb</media:title>
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  407. <media:content url="http://www.richmondshare.com.br/wp-content/uploads/writing-books-271x300.jpg" medium="image">
  408. <media:title type="html">writing books</media:title>
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  411. <item>
  412. <title>Seven tips for a successful conference presentation</title>
  413. <link>https://isabelavillasboas.wordpress.com/2016/06/19/seven-tips-for-a-successful-conference-presentation/</link>
  414. <comments>https://isabelavillasboas.wordpress.com/2016/06/19/seven-tips-for-a-successful-conference-presentation/#comments</comments>
  416. <dc:creator><![CDATA[isabelavb]]></dc:creator>
  417. <pubDate>Sun, 19 Jun 2016 19:49:56 +0000</pubDate>
  418. <category><![CDATA[Professional development]]></category>
  419. <category><![CDATA[conference presentations]]></category>
  420. <guid isPermaLink="false">http://isabelavillasboas.wordpress.com/?p=679</guid>
  421.  
  422. <description><![CDATA[As the 15th Braz-TESOL International Conference approaches, I’m sure my colleagues have begun or are about to begin working on their presentations. My goal here then is to help them out by providing some tips on how to prepare and deliver an effective talk or workshop, from the standpoint of someone with almost 30 years [&#8230;]]]></description>
  423. <content:encoded><![CDATA[<p style="text-align:center;"><a href="http://www.richmondshare.com.br/wp-content/uploads/Presentation.jpg" rel="attachment wp-att-4552"><img loading="lazy" class="alignnone size-medium wp-image-4552" src="https://i0.wp.com/www.richmondshare.com.br/wp-content/uploads/Presentation-300x300.jpg" alt="Presentation" width="300" height="300" /></a></p>
  424. <p>As the 15<sup>th</sup> Braz-TESOL International Conference approaches, I’m sure my colleagues have begun or are about to begin working on their presentations. My goal here then is to help them out by providing some tips on how to prepare and deliver an effective talk or workshop, from the standpoint of someone with almost 30 years of experience in ELT and who has attended almost, if not more than, 100 in-house,  local, national and international conferences. I am not writing as an experienced presenter, but rather, as a participant in hundreds of talks, workshops, panels, round-tables, etc.  I know we are not short of official presentation guidelines and blog posts providing tips for presenters. However, I hope these suggestions from a knowingly picky person may add to what is already available or remind people of what they already know.</p>
  425. <p><span id="more-679"></span></p>
  426. <ul>
  427. <li><strong>Customize the presentation</strong></li>
  428. </ul>
  429. <p>One thing that annoys me immensely is when I see that a presenter is giving the exact same talk delivered in other places, without any sort of customization. Conversely, I really admire those who go to the trouble of adding the conference logo to their slides and adapting their talk to the given context, even incorporating information from the plenaries and talks already delivered in the event. I frown upon presentations that I saw some months before in another event and that have nothing new. I can’t believe that the presenter has not gained any insights since they last gave the talk. I’m not talking about major changes, but rather, one or two changes that show constant learning and recycling.</p>
  430. <ul>
  431. <li><strong>Stick to the time limit</strong></li>
  432. </ul>
  433. <p>Effective presentations should begin and finish at the established time, not before and not later. In order to plan effectively according to the time allotted, it is crucial that the presenter know exactly how long each of the topics addressed will take so as not to find themselves with too much time left at the end or pressed for time. Inexperienced presenters should definitely rehearse their talks and time themselves. Just like in a lesson plan, think of different ways that the same topic can be expanded or reduced based on how the timing of the presentation goes. However, don’t add more slides that you can use just in case. At least to me, it doesn’t look good when the presenter starts skipping slides. I feel that I’m missing important information that the presenter had planned to show but didn’t have time to. It’s like a teacher giving a three-page worksheet to students but then working on just the first page due to lack of time. Even worse, it can look like you have that talk on a shelf and you pick it up and adapt it in loco according to the presentation length.</p>
  434. <ul>
  435. <li><strong>Make sure your slides are well designed</strong></li>
  436. </ul>
  437. <p>You don’t have to be an expert in design to know that red letters on a yellow background don’t work.  Make sure you choose colors that work together effectively. If you don’t think you can do this, keep it simple then and use black in a white background or vice-versa. Also make sure your slides maintain the same visual coherence from beginning to end. Don’t keep changing colors and fonts randomly. Images are always welcome because they help stimulate different parts of the brain. Also, don’t overload each slide with too much written information and don’t use more slides and words than you really need. Needless to say, don’t only read from your slides! Use key words that will help you remember what you have to say, rather than everything you have to say.  It is always a good idea to show the slides to a colleague.</p>
  438. <ul>
  439. <li><strong>Don’t count on the Internet</strong></li>
  440. </ul>
  441. <p>We know that Internet is provided and it is supposed to work. However, something may always go wrong. Don’t base your presentation only on an online source such as google slides or online Prezi, for example. Always have a backup on a flash drive or, in the case of Prezi, an offline version. If you are going to show Internet sources or pages, always have screenshots ready just in case. If you are using a Youtube video, make sure you also have it offline.  It is very embarrassing when presenters can’t open what they planned to show and keep trying and trying while the audience is in that awkward silence.</p>
  442. <ul>
  443. <li><strong>Use videos with a clear purpose and keep them short</strong></li>
  444. </ul>
  445. <p>Someone once said that an effective presentation should use different media, especially videos. Now everyone wants to use a video in their presentation. However, sometimes the videos don’t have much to add to what is being said or they are too long. Yes, videos add liveliness and can make your talk more dynamic, but they have to be used purposefully and they must be short. Show only the segment that demonstrates the point you want to make. Also, avoid videos that have become too popular and that most of your audience will probably have already seen. Needless to say, only use videos if you are sure you have the technological skills to handle them. It’s best to already embed them in your presentation, but make sure it works beforehand!</p>
  446. <ul>
  447. <li><strong>Research your topic and cite your sources</strong></li>
  448. </ul>
  449. <p>Presenters must be relatively knowledgeable about their topic. That’s why they are presenting! It’s important to show the audience that you have researched your topic and know who the key references are. It doesn’t mean you need a reference for everything you say like in an academic literature review, but you need to use at least a few sources, especially for people who want to learn more about the topic. Make sure you also cite your sources and that you don’t present others’ ideas as if they were your own.  As an example from my field of interest, I can’t imagine someone presenting something on genre-based second language writing and not citing Hyland.</p>
  450. <ul>
  451. <li><strong>Balance theory and practice</strong></li>
  452. </ul>
  453. <p>In an event like Braz-TESOL, unless you are presenting a research report, people want practical examples of what you are presenting. Once I attended a presentation on a blended course in which the presenter spent a long time discussing the definitions of blended learning, the types of blended learning that one can adopt, and the steps in developing the blended course in her institution. However, we never got to see the course itself and examples of activities that were created for the online component. In other words, we learned what was done and why but never saw how it was done. For me it was frustrating because it was exactly the how that I was interested in. In other words, the practical aspect was left aside and too much focus was given to the theory. It’s like a lesson in which the lead-in is so long that there’s little or no time left for the lesson itself.</p>
  454. <p>I’m sure there are many more useful tips for presenters. These are the ones that came immediately to mind. Further contributions are more than welcome!</p>
  455. <p>Image by isosphere from freedigitalphotos.net</p>
  456. ]]></content:encoded>
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  459. <slash:comments>4</slash:comments>
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  464. <media:title type="html">isabelavb</media:title>
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  466.  
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  468. <media:title type="html">Presentation</media:title>
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  472. <title>The native versus non-native teacher dichotomy – Challenging Mental Models</title>
  473. <link>https://isabelavillasboas.wordpress.com/2016/05/01/the-native-versus-non-native-teacher-dichotomy-challenging-mental-models/</link>
  474. <comments>https://isabelavillasboas.wordpress.com/2016/05/01/the-native-versus-non-native-teacher-dichotomy-challenging-mental-models/#respond</comments>
  476. <dc:creator><![CDATA[isabelavb]]></dc:creator>
  477. <pubDate>Sun, 01 May 2016 18:16:38 +0000</pubDate>
  478. <category><![CDATA[NNEST]]></category>
  479. <guid isPermaLink="false">http://isabelavillasboas.wordpress.com/?p=676</guid>
  480.  
  481. <description><![CDATA[I saw a post recently on Facebook advertising a position for a native speaking teacher in a Brazilian language program. The post appeared on the page of a closed group for English teachers in Brazil. The reaction to the post was immediate. People wanted to know why the program was only hiring native speakers and [&#8230;]]]></description>
  482. <content:encoded><![CDATA[<p>I saw a post recently on Facebook advertising a position for a native speaking teacher in a Brazilian language program. The post appeared on the page of a closed group for English teachers in Brazil. The reaction to the post was immediate. People wanted to know why the program was only hiring native speakers and questioned this practice. The person in search of this native teacher justified the restriction saying that it was for advanced groups, that the program already had non-native teachers, and that this specific job ad was to fill the slots for native teachers. Soon after, a group participant joined the discussion defending the practice of hiring a native teacher because, after all, given the same experience and qualifications, of course a native teacher is better than a non-native one. Needless to say, a long discussion ensued, with many people reacting against the job ad. I requested that the Facebook group administrators adopt the practice of many teacher associations, such as TESOL, which will not post ads for jobs that are exclusive to native teachers. And so they did.</p>
  483. <p><span id="more-676"></span></p>
  484. <p>Obviously dissatisfied with the outcomes, the same person who had defended the job ad (a Brazilian, by the way)  posted a question on the same Facebook page, asking members to give their opinion about whether they thought that, given the same experience and qualifications, a native speaking language teacher was always better than a non-native one. About a third of the people answered what I believe to be the best practice: that they would engage the two candidates, native and non-native, in a comprehensive teacher selection process, involving resume analysis, interviews and demo classes, and then would select the one most suited for the job. However, I was surprised that many answered that they would definitely hire the non-native teacher because they are usually better at teaching English to Brazilians than native ones. This means they wouldn’t even consider the native one, not even for an interview. I believe that this reaction against native teachers is as pervasive as the usual negative reaction against the non-native ones. What we as professionals have to uphold is that we have equal opportunities, not that we have a reserved market and exclude all native teachers.  Coincidentally, just as I was writing this post, I came across <a href="https://iatefl.britishcouncil.org/2016/session/plenary-silvana-richardson">Silvana Richardson’s brilliant plenary at IATEFL</a> on this topic and this was exactly her conclusion – we have to fight the native versus non-native dichotomy and join forces to seek equality. As expected, a few people said they would hire the native teacher for conversation and advanced classes, and the non-native teacher for beginners. This is still a long-held belief that I will discuss below. Yet a few other people said that, given the same conditions, they would definitely hire the native teacher, no doubt about it. A native speaker of English (at least judging by the name and the comment) said they would never learn Portuguese from a non-native speaker beyond the basic level.</p>
  485. <p>&nbsp;</p>
  486. <p>A few days after this experience with the Facebook exchanges, our program held our graduation ceremony and one of the graduating students gave a speech. He started his studies with us in the Teens course, at the age of 11, and had just concluded the Advanced Course, at the C1 level. When he opened his mouth to speak, we were all flabbergasted. Not only did he have a beautiful, strong voice, he also had no noticeable accent. His English was perfect. This guy had never lived abroad and had only had one native teacher during his five years studying with us, and yet he didn’t have a noticeable accent! This coincides with the recent findings of Levis, Sonsaat, Link, and Barriuso (2016), which showed that having a native teacher did not result in students’ higher attainment of pronunciation as compared with the control group, instructed by a non-native teacher. The authors conclude:</p>
  487. <blockquote><p>“…the results offer encouragement to nonnative teachers in teaching pronunciation, suggesting that, like other language skills, instruction on pronunciation skills is more dependent on knowledgeable teaching practices than on native pronunciation of the teacher.”</p></blockquote>
  488. <p>All this got me thinking about why in this day and age, with all the world Englishes and the absolute lack of evidence that having only native teachers leads to better attainment in the language, the native speaker fallacy (Phillipson, 1992) is still so alive. Based on the comments on Facebook and others that I have heard or read in the past few years, here are what I find to be the three main reasons behind these mental models, that is, “the images, assumptions, and stories that we carry in our minds of ourselves, other people, institutions, and every aspect of the world” (Senge et al., 2012, loc. 2278).</p>
  489. <p>&nbsp;</p>
  490. <ol>
  491. <li>First of all, I believe it has to do with one’s idea of what the role of the teacher is. If one believes that the teacher is the sole owner of knowledge and that it is their role to impart this knowledge to their students, then maybe a native speaker might be better equipped to do this because more years, months, days, and hours of contact with the language will lead to more knowledge to be transferred to students. It is the deficit model in which the teacher has something that the student does not have. Within a different paradigm, one in which the teacher is seen a mediator of learning, the person responsible for providing affordances in language learning, then the idea of the native speaking teacher as the ideal teacher becomes senseless because the teacher will provide the students with resources to facilitate their acquisition of the language, one of the resources being the access to different models of the language, native or non-native.  We must recognize that nowadays we are not short of resources to expose students to English in all its varieties, by way of songs, videos, podcasts, movies, TV series, online games, you name it! In this sense, the native speaking teacher as a model to students becomes irrelevant.</li>
  492. </ol>
  493. <p>&nbsp;</p>
  494. <ol start="2">
  495. <li>Second, it has to do with students’ and teachers’ beliefs and mindsets about language learning. What is behind the idea that a non-native teacher cannot be as effective as a native one is the belief that one cannot learn a second or foreign language well enough to teach it effectively. It’s as if there is a threshold that we believe we can never cross. Medgyes (1994) relates this to an inferiority complex, a belief that non-native teachers’ knowledge is always inadequate and that they will never measure up to the standards. How can we non-native teachers, excellent language learners ourselves, defend this idea?</li>
  496. </ol>
  497. <p>&nbsp;</p>
  498. <ol start="3">
  499. <li>Third is the discussion of who owns English and who is, after all, a native speaker of English. As is mentioned repeatedly in every article, talk or discussion on this subject matter, English has crossed borders and nationalities and, as a lingua franca, belongs to the whole world. As it is the main language of communication in professional and academic circles internationally, it does not belong to its native speakers anymore. I would argue that a highly proficient, C2 level non-native teacher like many I know might be better equipped to prepare students for international communication in English than a native one. Native speakers tend to take the language for granted. They are not curious to know what speakers of other varieties of the language use because they tend to value their own variety better. They might not notice nuances in the language of different speakers that proficient non-native speakers notice. That’s what good language learners do – notice. For example, an American teacher in my program always corrected non-native teachers when they said “television” with the stress on the third syllable, explaining that this was Portuguese interference. The right way to say it was to stress the first syllable (/ˈtel.ɪ.vɪʒ.ən/). Watching BBC one day, I heard the presenter pronouncing the word with the stress on the third syllable (/ˌtel.ɪˈvɪʒ.ən/). I mentioned this to the American teacher and she was surprised. As an American, she would probably not watch BBC and even if she did, she would probably not notice the difference in pronunciation the way I did because we tend to take our native language for granted. I might not be a native speaker of English in the strict sense of the word, but maybe I’m more cognizant of English as an International Language than my American friend is.  In fact, Chia Suan Chong provides five reasons why native speakers need to learn to speak English internationally (<a href="https://www.etprofessional.com/5-reasons-why-native-speakers-needs-to-learn-to-speak-english-internationally.aspx">Chong, 2016</a>).</li>
  500. </ol>
  501. <p>&nbsp;</p>
  502. <p>As a community of practice, we proficient, qualified and experienced non-native teachers of English in Brazil and around the world have to join forces to fight the beliefs, mindsets and mental models examined above. As Peter Senge et al. say in the book <strong>Schools that Learn</strong>(Senge et al, 2012), mental models are tacit and exist below the level of awareness. Unexamined mental models limit people’s ability to change. Thus, we have to examine and challenge these mental models if we want to change. I hope my three challenges above help keep this conversation going.</p>
  503. <p>&nbsp;</p>
  504. <p>&nbsp;</p>
  505. <p>References:</p>
  506. <p>&nbsp;</p>
  507. <p>Chong, C.S. (2016, March 18). 5 reasons why native speakers need to learn to speak English internationally [Web log post]. <strong>English Teaching Professional</strong>.</p>
  508. <p>Levis, J. M., Sonsaat, S., Link, S. and Barriuso, T. A. (2016), Native and Nonnative Teachers of L2 Pronunciation: Effects on Learner Performance. <strong>TESOL Quarterly</strong>. doi: 10.1002/tesq.272</p>
  509. <p>Medgyes, P. (1994). <strong>The non-native teacher</strong>. London, UK: Macmillam Publishers Ltd.</p>
  510. <p>Phillipson, R. (1992). <strong>Linguistic Imperialism</strong>. Oxford: OUP.</p>
  511. <p>Senge, Peter, et. al (2012). <strong>Schools that Learn: A Fifth Discipline Fieldbook for </strong><strong>Educators, Parents, and Everyone Who Cares about Education</strong>. New York: Crown Busisness.</p>
  512. ]]></content:encoded>
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  524. <title>Punishing with grades &#8211; are you ready to rethink your grading system?</title>
  525. <link>https://isabelavillasboas.wordpress.com/2016/04/16/punishing-with-grades-are-you-ready-to-rethink-your-grading-system/</link>
  526. <comments>https://isabelavillasboas.wordpress.com/2016/04/16/punishing-with-grades-are-you-ready-to-rethink-your-grading-system/#respond</comments>
  528. <dc:creator><![CDATA[isabelavb]]></dc:creator>
  529. <pubDate>Sat, 16 Apr 2016 19:57:32 +0000</pubDate>
  530. <category><![CDATA[Assessment]]></category>
  531. <category><![CDATA[formative assessment]]></category>
  532. <category><![CDATA[grades]]></category>
  533. <guid isPermaLink="false">http://isabelavillasboas.wordpress.com/?p=670</guid>
  534.  
  535. <description><![CDATA[I have recently read two posts about grading that touch upon a topic that has long been boggling my mind – the use of grades as punishment and the overall fairness of grading systems. I would like to invite you to check out Monte Syrie’s explanation of why he doesn’t give zeros anymore, or grades [&#8230;]]]></description>
  536. <content:encoded><![CDATA[<p><img loading="lazy" data-attachment-id="672" data-permalink="https://isabelavillasboas.wordpress.com/2016/04/16/punishing-with-grades-are-you-ready-to-rethink-your-grading-system/grades/" data-orig-file="https://isabelavillasboas.files.wordpress.com/2016/04/grades.jpg" data-orig-size="400,265" data-comments-opened="1" data-image-meta="{&quot;aperture&quot;:&quot;0&quot;,&quot;credit&quot;:&quot;&quot;,&quot;camera&quot;:&quot;&quot;,&quot;caption&quot;:&quot;&quot;,&quot;created_timestamp&quot;:&quot;0&quot;,&quot;copyright&quot;:&quot;&quot;,&quot;focal_length&quot;:&quot;0&quot;,&quot;iso&quot;:&quot;0&quot;,&quot;shutter_speed&quot;:&quot;0&quot;,&quot;title&quot;:&quot;&quot;,&quot;orientation&quot;:&quot;0&quot;}" data-image-title="grades" data-image-description="" data-image-caption="" data-medium-file="https://isabelavillasboas.files.wordpress.com/2016/04/grades.jpg?w=300" data-large-file="https://isabelavillasboas.files.wordpress.com/2016/04/grades.jpg?w=400" class="alignnone size-full wp-image-672 aligncenter" src="https://isabelavillasboas.files.wordpress.com/2016/04/grades.jpg?w=510" alt="grades"   srcset="https://isabelavillasboas.files.wordpress.com/2016/04/grades.jpg 400w, https://isabelavillasboas.files.wordpress.com/2016/04/grades.jpg?w=150&amp;h=99 150w, https://isabelavillasboas.files.wordpress.com/2016/04/grades.jpg?w=300&amp;h=199 300w" sizes="(max-width: 400px) 100vw, 400px" /></p>
  537. <p>I have recently read two posts about grading that touch upon a topic that has long been boggling my mind – the use of grades as punishment and the overall fairness of grading systems. I would like to invite you to check out <a href="http://www.edutopia.org/discussion/our-grading-system-fair">Monte Syrie’s</a> explanation of why he doesn’t give zeros anymore, or grades below 50% for that matter, and why. Likewise, <a href="http://www.edutopia.org/blog/when-grading-harms-student-learning-andrew-miller?utm_source=facebook&amp;utm_medium=socialflow">Andrew Miller</a> explains how grades can harm student learning and how he has refrained from giving zeroes, taking points off for late work, grading practice exercises or homework, and allowing grading to become more important than teaching. Both authors contend that when we give students a zero or take points off for late work, their grade ends up not reflecting how much they have truly learned. An outsider who looks at a student’s grade might be misled into thinking that the student hasn’t mastered the content, when in fact what might have happened is simply that the student got a zero that was averaged out with the other grades, resulting in an unrealistically low average.</p>
  538. <p><span id="more-670"></span></p>
  539. <p>I have to admit that what these two educators argue makes a lot of sense to me. After all, don’t we give students grades so we can demonstrate their level of attainment of the learning outcomes? If this is the case, then the grade should reflect this achievement and nothing else. Let’s exemplify this with a concrete situation. Suppose students were asked to write a letter to the city council about a problem in their community and what needs to be done to fix it. Student A wrote a relatively good letter, was assessed based on well-defined scoring rubrics, and got a 90, hopefully after having had the chance to receive feedback from peers and the teacher and then rewrite the letter. Student B wrote a flawless letter but turned in the assignment late, losing 10 points for that. Both student A and student B will receive the same grade, but student B’s letter demonstrated superior attainment of the learning objectives in terms of cohesion, cohesion, and language use.  Is this coherent with the principle that students’ grades should reflect their level of achievement?</p>
  540. <p>At this point you are probably thinking, “But how do we get students to turn in their work on time if there are no consequences for not doing so?”  Miller says he uses the problem of late homework as a teachable moment in his class and tries to address the causes for the behavior. Students might need guidance on how to make better use of their time so they can cope with all the tasks.  I think sometimes it is also an opportunity for the teacher to realize that the deadlines might perhaps be too short or that the tasks are not being scaffolded enough in class, leading students to feel insecure and take longer than necessary to complete an assignment.  But then you might also be thinking, “Yeah, right. But what if nothing of this works and they keep turning in late work?”  After all, it’s not practical for teachers to keep receiving late work day after day, and students do need to learn to be responsible and hand in their work on time. That’s true, and I don’t think either author suggests such a laissez-faire environment.  Maybe then what we need to think about is alternative types of consequences for turning in late work other than losing points. Or even better, let’s focus on the positive behavior and think of positive consequences for turning in work on time – as long as the consequence is not getting extra points of course!</p>
  541. <p>The same rationale works for zeros. There are teachers who are proud to be strict. They set a deadline for turning in work and if the student doesn’t meet the deadline, it’s a zero. The problem with this zero is that, depending on the number of other grades it will be averaged out with, it can practically fail the student. Also, the average will again not represent what this student knows, so it will be misleading.  In my administrative position, I have often come across situations of failing students who would have passed the course hadn’t it been for a zero.  In this case, should these students take the whole semester again because they didn’t do page 40 of the workbook? Would you like to have in your class a student who has mastered the content of the level but failed because of a zero? Will you be able to truly motivate this student?</p>
  542. <p>An even thornier issue discussed by Monte Syrie is that he does not give students a failing grade below 50% in a marking system that goes from A to F and in which F means any grade below 59%. His rationale is that the grading system stops at F, not G, H, or I. Why give a 10 or a 33 when a 50 is a failing grade all the same, showing that the student has not mastered the content, but it is still a grade that the student can make up for more easily than a very low one? In his mind, there isn’t such a thing as a bigger or a lesser fail. This was music to my ears, especially when it comes to scoring rubrics.  In the institution where I work, we have customized rubrics for every oral or written assessment. The writing rubrics, for example, are usually divided into domains, such as content, organization, language use, vocabulary, and mechanics, and there are ranges of performance that usually stop at 4 at in a 10-point scale, not less than that. A teacher once came to me and suggested that the range for “doesn’t meet the standard” should go all the way to 0 and not just stop at 4. Now I’m relieved to know that my explanation was in keeping with Syrie’s rationale: 1) why give students such low a grade that will put them in a hole they won’t be able to crawl out of? 2) If the student is in a group that represents a certain level of proficiency, how can this student have a zero percent performance, for instance, in language use in an oral test, or in mechanics in a composition? The students would obviously be misplaced! Also, isn’t a 40% already a “good enough” failing grade?</p>
  543. <p>Grading has existed for centuries in our traditional education systems around the world and it is very hard for us to let go of long-held beliefs about grading. However, as we embrace 21<sup>st</sup>– Century teaching and learning, perhaps it is also time to change our mindsets about grades and what they should or should not represent. Taking the punishment element out of our grading system is a great start!</p>
  544. <p>&nbsp;</p>
  545. <p>Image by Arvind Balaraman courtesy of freedigitalphotos.net</p>
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