Learning Objectives

Learning objectives usually take few lines in a course syllabus or in a lesson plan, but properly composed and clearly stated learning objectives can influence the flow of the learning process greatly.

First of all, learning objectives help to vector learners in the right direction. They state what a learner can be able to do and what he is supposed to know upon a completion of a certain stage of the learning process. At the same time they direct an instructor in his or her planning, thus keeping the teaching process focused on achieving learners’ goals.

Although objective writing process may seem quite obvious, in fact an instructor should constantly keep several things in mind: what should learners Know? what can learners actually do and what Skills should they have? what attitude towards the learning process and its results should learners reflect and how are they Affected? In other words learning objects depend on at least 3 parameters (SKAs). 

To be considered clear and effective, in other words “SMART”, learning objectives should satisfy a number of requirements. They must be 

• Specific (learners realize what is expected from them).
• Measurable (the teacher can say if objectives are achieved or not).
• Achievable (it is possible for learners in their particular situation to say “Done!” and put a huge check next to the objective). 
• Relevant (objectives are related to the course in general and learners can understand why they need to achieve this objective).
• Timely (the timeframe given to achieve the objective is reasonable).

Acronym SMART occurred back in 1981. In today’s world being SMART is not enough, learning objectives are becoming SMARTER: we should always keep in mind that learning process, and thus objectives we set for our learners, must be Engaging and Rewarding as well.

Pre, While and Post-Listening Activities

Pre-listening activities

My favourite pre-listening activities are based on brainstorming. Actually there are dozens of ways we can use this technique in the EAL environment. Students may generate ideas on their own and then share them with others; students may work in small groups and create mind maps; students may call out ideas for the teacher to write them down on the board. It’s also interesting to use SWOT analysis (strengths, weaknesses, opportunities and threats), which usually reveals ideas learners may not be aware before. Adding attribute change to the brainstorming process leads to brand new ideas, for example, learners think about how they would deal with the problem, if it took place in a different time period (100 years ago) or in a different place (another country).

A great way to activate learners’ schemata is to add visuals to pre-listening stage of the lesson. Learners look at the pictures related to the listening text and try to make guesses about the main topic or about what is going on in the picture. The teacher can also use learners’ imagination and ask them to close their eyes and to create mental pictures related to the topic of the listening text, and then to share them with others.

My students always enjoy group drawing activities. They take turns to draw something on the whiteboard (usually I write down elements to draw on the slips of paper) and at the end we get a complete picture related to the topic of the text.

It is very motivating when the teacher brings realia to the class: from personal photos to soda cans. I like the idea, suggested by J.J.Wilson, to bring in objects that form part of a story for learners to guess what the listening text is about. I’d like to develop this idea: in advance, the teacher may ask each student to bring in one particular object (related to the text). Students do not know the purpose of bringing this object and they have no idea what other students will bring (the teacher may assign objects via email). During the pre-listening stage learners demonstrate their objects to the class and tell few words about in what situations people usually use them. And then they discuss how all these realia relate to the text.

There are numerous pre-listening activities based on using texts and words: various gap-filling activities; key words activities, etc. The teacher suggests a list of key words and learners in small groups make short stories using these words (it’s also a way of pre-teaching vocabulary). After listening to the text learners compare whose suggestion is the closest to the listening text. Likewise learners may be given a title of the text.

While-listening activities
 

While-listening activities vary depending on what learner’s skill or ability the teacher would like to practice. 

When students are required to listen for gist, they are asked some basic questions What? Who? Why?

When they listen for details, they practice selective listening: an ability to ignore most of what we hear and focus only on what is relevant. Among such type of activities I want to point out writing down some specific information (dates, numbers, etc.) and spotting the difference (learners look at a picture and listen to its description and spot any differences). Another activity I like is listening to directions and tracing the route on the map. Or students can complete a diagram or drawing based on what they hear.

An important and useful skill to practice while listening is inferring, a thinking skill in which we make deductions by going beyond what is actually stated. For this purpose the teacher can pause the recording from time to time and asks students what they think will come next and why. It can be quite a distracting activity though.

Post-listening activities

First of all, post-listening activities are oriented to check the degree of comprehension of the text. I think almost every teacher uses summarizing for this purpose. To add some fun to the process of summarizing the teacher can ask learners to create a group summary. 

Secondly, we need post-listening activities to arouse a discussion and make a transition to speaking activities. The teacher can ask learners to personalize the problem touched upon in the text (What would you do in this situation?), to dwell upon pros and cons, to agree or disagree with some statements related to the text, etc.

Fluency in Communication

Fluency is an ability to express yourself readily and effortless. A transition from mental concepts to articulated speech is automatic and instinctive for a native speaker. But it can be quite a challenge for an EAL learner. That is why language learning process should give enough attention to fluency-based issues.

So, what aspects can make an EAL learner a fluent speaker? First of all, I want to point out an ability to use natural speech and authentic discourse. Even if a learner’s speech is grammatically “spotless”, but he keeps using archaisms in his speech, he will sound "weird" and will still have problems with expressing his ideas. One of the ways to gain “authenticity” and “naturalness” in speech is to repeat whatever learners listen to in real life (phrases from movies, song lyrics, people talking in a bus (of course to avoid awkwardness in this situation, it’s better to repeat phrases silently), an EAL teacher’s questions or instructions, etc.).

Another attribute of the natural language is idiomatic language. Apparently you can’t get far in developing fluency skills if you don’t know and can’t use idioms and idiomatic expressions (set phrases, phrasal verbs, etc.)

One of the fluency-based challenges for an EAL learner includes applying correct tone and register. In other words different types of situations require particular types of language to use (talking to a boss, talking to a neighbour, talking to a close friend). If we add numerous language functions (giving advice, apologizing, having an argument, etc.) the variety of communication situations will grow at an exponential rate. It’s impossible to learn all the cases, but using discourse chains in the learning process is a good way to promote fluency.

Building the Writing Habit

Harmer Jeremy pointed out a number of engaging and effective activities focused on building the writing habit. Here, I’d like to list the ideas I will definitely use with my EAL learners and I also want to add a few more activities I find interesting for this purpose (they are in cursive).

a. Sentence-Writing

- Dictating sentence for completion, this activity is also called Half Dictation: the teacher starts a sentence and learners are supposed to complete it.

- A Postcard from Somewhere: first learners fill in a small questionnaire (they name a country, an animal, a place, an adjective and so on) and after that their answers are pasted into the prepared in advance text of the letter. As a result, learners have a lot of fun (“I went to the zoo to see the rare and round Chinese cat. It was tasty!”)

- Creative writing prompts (the weirdest dream you've had; imagine you're a chef... what type of restaurant would you open and why?)

b. Using Music

- Words (write word associations while listening to music)

- Film scores (describe a film scene while listening to music)

c. Using Pictures

- Describing pictures/photos

- Suspect and objects (each learner describes a random picture, than all pictures are mixed and peers are to guess a picture by reading descriptions)

- Write the postcard (based on the picture)

- Portraits (write a letter to the person on the portrait, write day in life)

- Stories (write a story about the picture)

d. Writing Poems

- Acrostic poems (first letters of each line form a word)

- Model poems (using the same poetic forms, models)

- Poems with rhymes (each learner makes sentences ending with a certain word; these words rhyme with each other)

e. Collaborative Writing

- Writing a story sentence by sentence

- Dictogloss (write the text after listening to it)

- First lines, last lines (story writing is provoked by giving first line/last line)

- Story circle (each learner writes a sentence on the top of a sheet of paper, than folds it so that the next writer can’t read it and passes it to the next learner, who writes the second sentence of the story. )

- The story circle may be combined with “Dictating sentence for completion”. For example, the teacher may start each sentence and learners are to finish it with their ideas (Last Thursday…; But suddenly …; It turned out that …)

f. Writing in Groups and Pairs

- Pen pals, emails, live chats (interacting with native speakers or English learners all over the world)

- Learners may also choose some forums (interesting for the) or social network groups and participate in discussions there.