Is Competency Based Assessment Useful for Older Language Learners?

February 5, 2016
Written by - Guest Contributor

For some time now, I have been having some reservations about the effectiveness and value of the competency based form of assessment that my paymasters have asked that I use in my class of older English as a second language (ESL) learners.

For starters, I don’t think that I am that competent to give what is generally called an objective “competency standard.” A number of items in a portfolio, including can-do lists, which by themselves seem to put too much pressure on older learners, still leave me questioning myself: What is my standard of competence? And am I assessing my students against my standard of competence? And not what I think they can do? Is the notion of competency superseding everything else in class? The questions keep popping up. And the more they do, the less competent I feel. Continue reading →

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Motivation Madness

February 1, 2016
Written by - Greg De Luca

Employee incentive business concept as a group of businessmen and businesswomen running on a track towards a dangling carrot on a moving cable as a financial reward metaphor to motivate for a goal. — Image source: www.bigstockphoto.com

The business of education is riddled with complexity and counter-productive demands. Teachers are often content-centered, students diploma-oriented and administrators bow down to the almighty dollar when making pedagogical decisions. In other words, students just want a job, and teachers want to profess the wonders of their discipline, while administrators want to show a profit. It is no surprise that the real goal of education is obfuscated by these demands, and the expectations that our students have are often misplaced.

Picture this. It’s the first day of an EAP (English for Academic Purposes) class. A particular student approaches you at the end of class and in broken English asks, “Teacher, will my English be like yours at the end of this course?” You want to say yes, but you know it is impossible. By telling the student the truth, you risk demoralizing her to the point that she drops the course. Why? Because she wants a job and she wants it now. Her motivation is employment. Yours is to improve her English. How do we square that circle? Simple. Chocolate. Continue reading →

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Say It With Confidence!

January 25, 2016
Written by - Gwen Zeldenrust @gwenzeldenrust

When we are submitting a cover letter to a perspective employer, we want to showcase our skills and to communicate the fact that we have confidence. In work preparedness classes we promote the idea that confident vocabulary and sentence structure is essential to having our cover letter read. But where is the line between confidence and over confidence, and how do we teach that to our students?

I once received a homework assignment that was a sample cover letter written by a student. The format was good, the sentences well formed, and there were no spelling mistakes. However, a few lines made me wince: “I am brilliant. I am the best person that your company could hire.” This surely was confidence, bordering on hubris, that may in fact have the same effect as grammatical error on the reader of the letter. If I were the hiring manager, I’m not sure I would have read much further. So, where do we draw the line? Continue reading →

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Resolutions 2016

January 18, 2016
Written by - Laila Al-Sbeinati @lailasbeinati

Happy New Year to all of you! How did you celebrate the New Year? My husband and I had planned to host a party but that plan quickly fell apart and thankfully so. We weren’t in the mood to do anything big, and our kids fell asleep early. So, I ended up getting dressed in my finest cotton pyjamas and watched a movie right in the comfort of my own home. Nothing beats that feeling. Besides, isn’t that how you roll when you’re a parent of young ones?

Speaking of the New Year, I can’t believe we’re halfway through January already. Our weather this year has felt more like springtime than winter, but today is a completely different story — It’s actually starting to feel like the winters we’re used to in Canada. This awful dip in temperature had me thinking about all of the New Year’s resolutions that were made, and I wondered how long we typically follow through with them when the going gets tough. January is a great month to start fresh and focus on accomplishing goals over a new year, but to stick to our resolutions requires commitment and patience as you set out to achieve what you’re looking for, whether it’s losing a few pounds, taking on a new challenge, or simply spending more time with family.
Continue reading →

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Trauma + Second Language Learning = Alternative Pedagogy

January 11, 2016
Written by - Maria Margaritis

Imagine you are in a doctor’s office being told that you have a serious, life threatening condition. Blood races through your veins, heartbeat pounds between your ears, breath is shallow, and you can feel your clothes sticking to your skin. Your body is in a heightened state of arousal. Do you recall the term “fight/flight/freeze” from science class? This is it — you are in what is called “survival mode”. By the time you get home, you realize how many questions needed to be asked but were forgotten while in the doctor’s office, and you barely remember what was said. This is an example of the psycho-physiology of trauma.

If you can relate to this scenario, (or one like it), then you can understand how difficult it is to function normally in this heightened state of arousal. It’s understandable that this state of anxiety can occur during a traumatic or highly stressful experience, but what you may not be aware of is that it can also persist for long periods after the traumatic event.

Why is this important now? With the refugee influx coming into Canada, you may encounter a surge of students in your classroom displaying symptoms related to post traumatic experiences like violence, displacement or loss, which will have an impact on how they learn. As a teacher, you may see a trend of problematic behaviours or students’ lack of progress in the traditional learning environment. Continue reading →

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A tip of the hat to Hattie

January 4, 2016
Written by - Greg De Luca

Best Practice - Business Background. Golden Compass Needle on a Black Field Pointing to the Word "Best Practice". 3D Render. — image source: bigstockphoto.com

As an ESL teacher, my first priorities are the linguistic development of my students and the attainment of their language learning goals. As an educational researcher, my first priority is to study and develop extremely effective teaching and learning strategies to get students to where they want to be. Students might not like it too much, but research is really starting to show that the ball is almost entirely in their court.

As Thomas Carruthers said, “A teacher is one who makes himself progressively unnecessary”. Ignoring how this might make us feel about our paycheques (insert chuckle), it is important to mention just how accurate this is, especially in terms of in-class strategies. Our students want to improve their English language ability, so they should be doing all the talking, reading and writing The effective and simultaneously “unnecessary” teacher is one who is more of a learning experience designer, who spends most of her time designing learning moments and strategies outside of class time, reflecting on student difficulties and successes when not in class, and using these as beacons in the dark when planning the next class. And now, we finally have confirmation that we teachers are useless – well, almost. Continue reading →

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Who are you? Really?

January 1, 2016
Written by - Guest Contributor

Path through green forest — Image source: bigstockphoto.com

Teaching grammar is a challenge. Making grammar fun is the real challenge, especially when deep questions about existence emerge during a lesson.

One of the things I do as an ESL instructor is to try to find a fun application for a grammatical point I am teaching. Recently, I came up with a great idea for teaching punctuation. After I finish teaching a class on punctuation, I ask the students to imagine that they are a punctuation mark and pick which one best defines them. I prompt them to say: “If I were a punctuation mark, I would be…” This exercise is not only fun (there are a lot of giggles when I introduce this), but helps reinforce the students’ knowledge of the role of punctuation and use of the conditional. Students say things like: “I would be a period because I like things to be clear and definite” or “I would be a question mark because I have a hard time just accepting things. I want to know why.” Although I could usually predict what punctuation mark a student would select, there were times when I was completely flummoxed. Usually, it was Continue reading →

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Relax, Reflect, and Renew!

December 28, 2015
Written by - Tamsin Cobb

Morning cup of coffee with mountain background at sunrise — image source: www.bigstock.com

Hello fellow readers!

It has come to that time of year again when we take some time to reflect on our past year or past school term and fill our thoughts with hopeful new adventures in the classroom – after all of the marking is done that is!

THANK YOU again to you all for visiting the site each week or clicking on an intriguing title from the monthly emails. Comments have been steadily picking up, and your thoughts, comments, and questions mean so much to our bloggers who take the time to create posts that will be meaningful to the TESL community.

We will be taking a break from blogging until the New Year and will return with our next posts appearing January 1^st and 4^th. We hope that weekly visits to our blog will be on your New Year’s list! Maybe there is a topic or idea you would to explore in the new year – why not send us an email and see if one of our bloggers can speak to his/her experiences.

As always, if you have any suggestions, an interest in blogging, or comments, please go to our Contact Us page and send us an email.

Happy Holidays and Happy New Year!

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Pragmatically Speaking

December 21, 2015
Written by - Gwen Zeldenrust @gwenzeldenrust

For the last 8 or 9 years I have been working in programs that deliver language instruction to adult newcomers who have language levels above CLB 7. These people have high levels of education and have been professionally trained. When I first started working with this demographic of students, I struggled with creating content that was relevant for my classes. I found their language skills to be quite good, and I wondered what else I could offer them.

Once I started to get to know them a little better, I came to understand that they were having difficulty obtaining employment. This fact seemed counter intuitive to me because I know that Canada relies on immigration to sustain its workforce. I had been taught that without immigration, Canada’s population would actually decline. So, what exactly prevents them from getting a job? Continue reading →

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Where are the videos?

December 14, 2015
Written by - John Allan @mrpottz

Image source: www.bigstockphoto.com

Over the past months, I have been posting and providing professional development sessions on creating engaging and interactive learning experiences with video as the focus media. Tools have included Edpuzzle, ESLVideo, Ted Ed Lessons, TubeChop and Zaption.

Searching for and finding suitable videos or animations takes time and effort. Depending on your learning objectives, there are many videos or section of videos that may be beneficial. As with everything in education, one size does not fit all. It takes imagination, discipline and creativity to create engaging learning objects that meet your instructional requirements.

The majority of feedback after my webinars and workshops has been focused on where to find suitable videos or animations. The annotated list below is a starting point for teachers to explore video resources: Continue reading →

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