Dan discusses the importance of practising English outside the classroom, using examples of social media settings, graded readers and subtitles.
From the classroom to the world
Like the cockpit simulators trainee pilots use before taking to the skies, our classrooms are a kind of simulator, an environment we create where learners can practise their language skills in safety before confronting the messy, noisy to-and-fro of real-world foreign-language communication. To this end, the teacher’s ultimate goal is to enable his or her students to stand on their own two feet, and as such we should always be thinking of how to encourage them to practise outside the classroom as much as we encourage them do so within it. Here are some suggestions for how this can be done.
Go to settings, select ‘language’, choose ‘English’, click ‘OK’
Our students’ attention may not always be focused on their studies, but it almost certainly will be on their phones, apps and social media, even if they don’t have them in class. Why not encourage them, then, to switch their default language to English? Given that we tend to navigate our mobile devices on auto-pilot, at least until something goes wrong, students may not pay much attention to the majority of alerts and messages that pop up, but it will familiarise them with useful digital technology vocabulary and foster a sense of English being part of their everyday world, while at times they will need to really understand the language in order to change a particular setting or perform a certain action.
Graded readers
One of the very best ways to increase vocabulary and reinforce your understanding of grammar is to read. That said, reading in another language can be daunting, especially when faced with lots of unknown vocabulary. This is where graded readers come in. Of course, in this age of screens and scrolling, getting teenagers to read in the first place can be quite a challenge. Here are a couple of suggestions for how to use graded readers that can help overcome this hurdle:
- Choose a graded reader for the whole class and set chapters to be read as homework. Then, in class, dedicate five minutes for students to discuss in groups what they have read. Questions can include: What happens in the chapter(s) you have just read? How are the characters developed? Have any new characters been introduced? What do you think will happen next? What new words have you learned? This establishes a routine both for homework and for class, but it doesn’t overburden students, as the chapters in graded readers tend to be short.
- Let students choose their own graded reader. Then either set a date some point later during the course when they will be called upon to make short presentations about what they have read or have them write book reviews (which can by nicely tied in with preparation for the writing paper of the FCE and CAE exams).
Watch, listen, try not to read
Probably one of the ways in which teenage students are most likely to engage with English outside of class of their own volition is by watching English language films and TV series. This is certainly to be encouraged. However, it’s worth giving your students a few tips that can make their viewing more effective in terms learning English.
First of all, students should try to watch without subtitles. Whenever there are subtitles on screen, it’s difficult not to end up reading them rather than listening to the dialogue. If subtitles are necessary, however, they should be in English rather than the student’s first language (this might not be as obvious to learners as it seems). Point out also that subtitles are rarely a verbatim transcription of what is actually said on screen.
Of course, watching an entire film or episode without subtitles may well be too much for most students, especially those at lower levels. With that in mind, they can instead pick a few scenes and concentrate their learning efforts there. First, they watch the scenes without subtitles and see how much they understand. Then, they re-watch with subtitles in English to check what they have understood and fill in any gaps.
If any dialogue remains unclear, they can then switch to the subtitles in their first language for clarification. Finally, they should watch the scenes again without any subtitles at all, by which stage they should be able to follow along much better. This process can be demonstrated in class. It may not appeal to all students, but for those who are keen to improve their listening skills, it offers a straightforward strategy for doing so at home.
Keep learning to learn
You can find out more about Learning to Learn in the Cambridge Life Competencies Framework.