Job Discussion Forums

[John Hall]

It also demonstrates to your students that communication is still possible even when linguistic accuracy and precision are lacking.

[william wallace]

....more lacking...as in what did you mean by that ?

[Sherri]

[J.]

I am teaching adults in some of my classes, which are of a continuing education nature, and of a few months duration, so if students aren't motivated they don't come back. So it's something I am always thinking about with every class I prepare. We don't use a textbook.

The OP's case seems to be different in that the students have to cover intensively a lot of material to prepare for a specific test. Whenever I have such classes to teach, I employ the "analyze and practice" technique. That is I analyze the tests and figure out what skills are required to pass the test. Then I focus on those, using material especially chosen for that from a broad range of media, plus from actual tests. I try to teach the students the skills they need to pass the test rather than focus on just covering lots of material, though we do that in a focused way. If my text is poor, I would go through it and choose only the parts that support my teaching goals, like someone else suggested, and make photocopies of other materials as supplements. Of course all this is obvious, but what may not be as obvious is that I talk to the students about what skills we are learning and we practice and test on how well we are learning them, rather than just on the material. What I am echoing, I guess, is to make the underlying goals of the lessons and how they will fit together into a strategy to pass the exam explicit to students.

It seems to me that they will also need to spend time outside the classes working on the different skills needed to pass the exam. Do you have a sheet with suggestions for this kind of study and how they should apportion their time?

[thelmadatter]

At the risk of tooting my own horn... I am doing something a little different for my Advanced B (uni-level, all students over 550 in TOEFL) class. No text (never used one in this class and wont for as long as I get away with it) but an assortment of authentic readings about culture and communication as well as writing assignments and discussion.

But for this time around, I am making making contributions to Wikipedia (strongly suggesting that students write about their home countries (most students are from Mexico but I get a number from other Latin American countries)). The final project is to write a completely new article from scratch.

If you would like to see my pages in Wikipedia on this -- http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:School_and_university_projects/ITESM_Campus_Toluca

The syllabus page has summaries of the assignments written for the "mentors" that have graciously volunteered to help me out.

I also plan to write a paper about how well (or not) the course goes. I have lit on motivation and authentic writing as well as how students learn vocab and grammar "incidentally" while doing such assignments.

If anyone would like to give me feedback about what they think or make suggestions... by all means!

[John Hall]

Wow, that's really interesting. Hmmm... I wonder if I can fit something like that into my advanced course in the future...

[gaijinalways]

Thelma, that is interesting, how many hours a week do you have those students? I could see giving that as an assignment, though it would be daunting for some of my students.