ELT News Think Tank

This Month's Think Tank Panel

Marc Helgesen

Chuck Sandy

George Jacobs

Panelists: Marc | Chuck | George
Date: February 2003

Topic: "What role can collaboration and project work play in language classes?"

George Jacobs

As Marc Helgeson said in last month's Think Tank, we need to realize that "We are not just teaching English. We are teaching people." We homo sapiens are social creatures, but too often in classrooms the rules are "Eyes on your own paper. No talking to your neighbors." Cooperation moves the classroom toward a more natural language and learning situation and away from the artificiality of the teacher-fronted environment.

“Cooperation can add that social element to any area of language learning.”

Students can cooperate on just about any area of language learning, from listening to grammar, from spelling to understanding cultures. Like online learning, cooperation among students doesn’t make us teachers irrelevant, but it does change our roles a bit and can make us more successful.

Cooperation can add that social element to any area of language learning. One example of adding cooperation to a teaching method that is often neglected in ELT: reading aloud by teachers. This a common tool in first language early childhood education, but people of all ages enjoy a good story.

Reading aloud by teachers can boost listening comprehension, vocabulary, and add fun and drama to the classroom. The way some teachers read aloud, the students sit as individuals. Their only interaction is with the teacher. Good, but it could be even better.

Let’s look at three examples of how we can spice up reading aloud by teachers by adding cooperation.

1. Tell/Check (Mid-Atlantic Association for Cooperation in Education [MAACIE], 1998)
It is important that students can follow the story or other text their teacher is reading aloud. One way to aid and check comprehension is for teachers to periodically stop reading and ask students to recap what they have heard so far.

Steps

1. The teacher pauses at various points in the text being read aloud.
2. Students are in pairs. At each pause, one member of the pair takes a turn to tell their version of what they have heard thus far. This group member is the Teller.
3. Their partner checks the recount for anything that has been left out or recalled incorrectly. This group member is the Checker.
4. The teacher calls on a couple of the Checkers to recount what their Teller said, incorporating any improvements made by the Checker.
5. The roles of Teller and Checker rotate after each pause by the teacher.

Tell/Check is just one of many related pair activities. Other possibilities are Tell/Question (in which the second partner asks a question about what the first partner has said), Tell/Elaborate and Tell/Disagree. The fact that students rotate roles promotes equal participation.

2. Flow Charts
Graphic organizers are tools that students can use to arrange and extend their thoughts. The Flow Chart, also known as a Story Map, is one example.

Steps

1. The teacher stops reading at selected points in the book.
2. Students work alone to write down in words or drawings (or a combination of the two) all the key events they remember up to the point where the teacher stopped reading. Group members then take turns to compare what they have written. Class discussion can follow.
3. When the reading is finished, groups create a flow chart by placing the events in the correct order.
4. The teacher calls a number and the person in each group with that number uses their flow chart to retell the story to another groups. Figure 1 shows a sample flow chart for "The Empty Pot" by Demi (1990).

Figure 1 - Sample flow chart for The Empty Pot

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Panelists: Marc | Chuck | George

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