Job Discussion Forums

[ktodba]

Where I'm working now there is a big initiatitive on what's called building learing power - we teach all subjects across the curriculum in English (hey, I work in the UK) but have a a significant percentage of our students from non English speaking families.

BLP tends to focus on how students learn and building their noticing, perserverance and resiliance skills to name but three. It seems to take the base position that we can't 'teach' our students everything so we need to teach them how to learn, reasearch and adapt to situations and overcome setbacks.

When I was working in EFL we called this learner independence but essentially it was the same basic aim of creating students who could adapt to the constant changes in language and the world.

I feel that BLP / learner independence is a valid objective for teachers but then I have the opportunity to work with students for a long period.

What should we be teaching? Skills? Language? Grammar? Does it matter if we have a short period or a long period with the students? CAn BLP be introduced independently or does it need a whole school approach?

Personally I believe that the BLP approach of creating good learners is successful but can it be applied to private language schools that need an immediate return?

I'm going round in circles on this so all thoughts gratefully received.

Is BLP a tool for success or just another buzzword?

Please justify all answers
thanks

[Glenski]

Of course, we have to give them words as building blocks, followed by grammar for structure. The younger the kids, the simpler the grammar.

Next should follow whatever skills are needed for the tasks we set to them. Reading skills, speaking skills, listening skills. All according to their age and level.

And, of course, they should be given freedom to use the language as independent thinkers. This may be easier in immersion settings like the UK, as opposed to Japan where I work.

And, yes, if you have kids only 45 minutes once a month (like what happens in many primary schools here), you have to adjust your teaching method, compared to what is done when you have kids several times a week.

Just curious, do you think that for primary school age kids, teachers should be teaching mostly speaking skills and vocabulary, or focus on reading first?

[ktodba]

Got to be honest,

I don't teach primary any more and have only done so briefly and so have yet to form a solid opinion. I'm teaching secondary, what we call KS4 / KS5 which roughly means aged 14-19. I tend to receive the kids who have been exposed to either speaking / reading / vocabulary. I hope that the focus will be wider than just one specific skill, but you raise a valid issue and one of interest in whether or not BLP is for primary or just secondary - we have schools visiting us to investigate at the moment if it can be fully employed in primary. I am trying to write a report showing good practice in schools for students who don't have English as a First language at the moment and a lot of what we are being told are good BLP activities are actually activities that I have seen in the classroom as EFL / ESL ESOL activites - I'm hoping to look at secondary language acquisition but primary acquisition could be interesting and helpful.

[Glenski]

Anyone else have an opinion, preferably from EFL environments (not ESL)?

[John Hall]

Yes. In teaching intensive English at a university, I am faced with the situation of having a very limited amount of time to try to make my students as fluent in English as is possible. I am presently teaching the advanced level, and with there being a lot of complicated grammar points to teach and that sort of thing, I find that my students don't get enough practice with the language in class. So, I get my students to do quite a bit of work outside of class. One of those activities requires students to participate in a discussion forum for students learning English. (Dave's has one.) They participate on the forums in order to create content for an essay that they will be writing. But the participation on the forums is not something I supervise much. (I don't need to, because if they don't participate on the forums, they will have nothing to write about.) Many students get into this activity, and a few have continued it after their course was finished. You could call this activity an "independent learner" activity. Whatever you want to call it, I think that these activities are extremely valuable. I think my students learn more from their actitivites on the discussion forums than what they learn in class. You can't beat learning by communicating with other English learners in countries all around the world.

An interesting question to pose here might be this: in the classroom, how do you teach students how to develop their own language-learning skills?