Learning under the Banyan tree: What if the path to becoming a Banyan tree is shown?

 “What is the most neglected English language skill in your classroom/context?” Almost 90% of the Bangladeshi ESL/EFL teachers will mention ‘listening’ in this respect. The reasons behind ‘lack of listening’ refer back not only to infrastructural limitations and larger classrooms but also to reading and writing oriented curricula and a summative test-focused assessment system.

Let’s digress a little from the point of listening. Like some other South-Asian countries like India and Nepal, in Bangladesh, a teacher-figure is most commonly compared with that of a Banyan tree. A teacher is supposed to be the knower of everything and knowledge is transmitted from teacher to students and almost never vice versa. As an old Banyan tree provides shades and shelters and is considered as an ancient guardian for the community, the same are the expectations from a teacher! In most cases, a teacher is supposed to pour the knowledge hodge-podge into students’ brains and any kind of deviation to that tradition adds a demerit to teachers’ careers in many educational institutions. As a consequence, students’ creativity, autonomy and critical thinking are being sidelined with the expanse of spoon-feeding.

Regarding listening skill, in many situations, even if it is present in the syllabus and course outline, it is not practiced in the classroom either because of the unavailability of materials or lack of classroom practice resources. To overcome classroom-practice limitations, teachers can scaffold learners to practice certain skills of their own at home. But how? Yes, here I come with my magical toolkit full of tech tips and tools! Today I will be presenting English Listening Lesson Library Online or elllo which provides full listening support especially for students and also for teachers. In situations where graded materials are not available, a teacher can introduce elllo to the students, if possible can practice some of the activities in the class and keep the rest of it for the students to be accessed by themselves.

elllo website

Speakers of World Englishes

This website currently offers more than 1400 audio and over 700 video lessons followed by quizzes! All are downloadable and come with transcriptions! All free! Quite lucrative, huh! Side by side with listening skill, this site also creates an environment for peripheral learning as the lessons are designed on a huge range of diverse and interesting topics from every nook and corner of the world. Therefore, students' general knowledge will be broadened. Moreover, this site also promotes localized learning as the listening lessons incorporate English speakers from many different countries including Asian, Australian, African and European contexts which do not restrict the learners’ experiences to traditional American or British English only. An opportunity indeed, right? Not only that, users can choose from a range of talks starting from short descriptive/informative ones to a friendly conversations and even interviews. And not to mention the level-wise distribution of activities. And this is not the end. This online library also provides free courses not only for students but also for teachers. What else can we expect (for free!) from a learning website?  

Different levels

This website is supported by the constructivist theory of learning which states that each learner constructs knowledge individually and socially. Not only that, by using elllo learners will be able to select activities according to their own proficiency/CEFR levels, interests or even nationality. They will be able to select any mode like audio or video, listening with or without transcripts, listening directly from the website or downloading the files for more personalized use. Moreover, there are quizzes for every lesson by attempting which students will be able to self-assess their understanding regarding the activities. In a nutshell, with an initial scaffolding from the teacher, students will be able to choose appropriate listening materials for them, practice those on their own and self-monitor their progress in learning. 

As predicted, this website has its 'another' side. Initially, if a teacher does not guide students about how to utilize this site regarding their levels and lesson activities, they may not find the most effective ways to be engaged in those. Again, some topics may not be culturally appropriate for all students. Another thing, most of the activities are based on grammar and vocabulary exercises and higher level listening activities like informative and inferential listening are not covered. Again, the level of formality of the recordings may not always be supportive of academic listening.

So, what to do now? Here comes a teacher’s scaffolding. He/she can suggest which types of lessons can work for them but without any imposition. Regarding higher-level activities, teachers can provide a guideline about how to think critically after listening to any topic and how they can build up their analytic and synthetic power by agreeing or disagreeing with any issue with appropriate reasoning. You can watch the following video to learn more about how to use elllo:

   

 A teacher is obviously a knower and a giver of knowledge but at the same time, he/she can also act as an instructor or a facilitator. Instead of waiting to be spoon-fed by teachers, students can be introduced to the powerful treasure of online resources to be explored and utilized by themselves. In this way, they will be able to take charge of their own learning and also self-evaluate their own performance. Eventually, in the long run, learners will be able to locate their needs and decide which steps can be initiated further to address those. Sometimes we need to loosen the rope for grabbing something bigger. The Banyan tree was there and will be there. But don’t you think it would be really conducive for students if they are shown the paths to become a Banyan tree?

I want to close today with a famous parable: to give a man fish will feed him a day but to teach him how to fish will feed him for a lifetime. Sounds relatable?        

“Tell me and I forget, teach me and I remember, involve me and I learn”: Through WebQuest?

Although there is a controversy about the ownership of the title’s quote, there is no dispute about the meaning that it implicates: learners learn the best when they are involved with the learning process. Regarding pedagogical principles and classroom practices, students can be involved directly into the learning through various means. In this context, I will start with an activity titled: Let's plan for an English Language Club. Here are some screenshots of my activity:

You probably will not be able to read and understand everything from the images. Therefore, if you are curious and want to know more about the task, just click on this link: JannatWebQuestTask

The images here are representing the outlook that will be visible to your students and other interested visitors of your task. If you open an account and want to create a WebQuest of your own, you will see the following view:

 

Creating any task to be of WebQuest's standers is cognitively challenging as you need to think about several interconnected processes, provide justifications for your steps and cross-check and cross-match the standard of your actions with those of WebQuest's ones. But if you have a creative task-based idea and if you can follow the instructions/guidelines provided for preparing and polishing (with images, clip arts, voices etc) an activity, you will be wowed by its mesmerizing implications. And obviously, you will be able to use it multiple times for multi-purposes. 

Now, what do you think of the task? I want you to ponder on the process and outcome of the activity. Does it only require the students to read/listen through the materials and write on them? Or is there anything that is beyond re-production and re-formulation of the processed input? Yes, you’ve got it right! It is the creative, realistic, and practical nature of the task because of which it stands out from the crowd. The successful completion of this task requires the students to create a new framework that can be implemented in real-life academic contexts. Moreover, there is no one-dimensional ‘either individual or group work’ option. The roles are distributed in such a manner that after finishing their individual study, students must collaborate and interact with each other within their groups for developing a final plan. 

As you can see from the pictures, I assigned 4 different roles to 4 students of the group and for the successful completion of the task, they need to go through 5 different stages which demand their actual involvement with the task.

Do you want to get access to this type of activity? Want to create one for your class? Stay with me to learn more about WebQuest. It may appear to you a bit old-fashioned (it really is!) but trust me, it genuinely helps teachers to create and select engaging learning activities.

There is a website named QuestGarden where teachers get an opportunity to create their own WebQuest task or can search and select engaging tasks among thousands of others. We often give students activities that require them only to read and then write on a topic or listen and then speak about something. In this process students’ higher-order thinking skills which demonstrate their ability to analyze, synthesize and evaluate certain issues are not properly addressed. But, as I said, WebQuest can definitely help.

A carefully designed and prudently structured WebQuest can turn out to be a perfect toolbox for teaching containing an amazing amalgamation of constructive knowledge, functional communication, meaningful negotiation, and collaborative interaction in a setting of institutional scaffolding. Here, students’ accumulated information will be modified and transformed into something else while they gradually proceed towards the completion of the task. By being engaged and involved in the activity, students are actually performing a real-life task. So instead of asking your students to write an essay or a paragraph on ‘An English Language Club’, won’t it be more exciting, engaging, and authentic to ask them to form one plan for that?

Okay. I think I have said enough to convince you to be enthusiastic about WebQuesting. Now, as there is no rose without thorns, there are certain downsides of WebQuest. If you want to select any activity from QuestGarden, the loads are probably not that heavy, you just need to be careful of choosing a contextually appropriate and academically feasible activity. However, as I have done here, if you want to create one on your own, firstly, be equipped for troubleshooting certain technical glitches. As this website is an old wizard, my laptop, which is adorned with the most recent updates, was not very supportive in creating my account there and asked me for restarts thrice! Moreover, the creation of a task is quite demanding as you need to invest much of your time and effort in it. And a last one… Yeah! You’re right! It’s not totally free. You can open an account and create and select several activities for free but if you don’t pay afterward, your access to those will expire in one month’s time. The decision is yours.

If you ask my opinion here, I would say it’s worth paying for exploring and utilizing the treasures of the QuestGarden for involving your students in the learning process. So, what are you waiting for!  

Miles to ‘fly’ before I sleep: Why not with a Boeing Dreamliner?

A relatable context

It’s 2 pm just after lunchtime. You have a reading class with 40 students. After entering the classroom, you have discovered that half of the class is yawning as if they immediately need a short nap. Right at that moment, you start thinking 'how will I motivate them to be engaged for the upcoming 2 hours!' You probably feel like sailing across an ocean with a boat and an oar. At the same time, your students are thinking ‘how will we survive among extreme boredom (of reading) in the long two hours!’ They seemingly feel like searching for a ray of light at the end of a dark tunnel. Both of the parties are thinking, ‘miles to cross before I finish my lesson’. So, why not give a motivational booster by flying in the class time together with a Boeing Dreamliner airbus instead of tough sailing or stumbled walking? Yes, incorporation of tech games in the classroom can motivate the students to be engaged in the class-work and also can motivate the teachers to teach.

Teaching English language skills in mixed ability classrooms is not easy. Teaching receptive skills is even more challenging in terms of motivating and engaging the students in classrooms tasks. In this respect, researches in the field of classroom motivation show a very strong and positive connection between technology-enhanced games and student-teacher motivation. Here, I want to introduce Quizlet, an online gaming tool that can be utilized for carrying out engaging classroom activities.

Features

Using Quizlet activities in the classroom may give you the experience of flying with one of the fastest and most luxurious airbus: a Boeing Dreamliner. Quizlet has several studying and learning features among which flashcards, matching games, spelling games, live quizzes, and electronic assessments are pivotal ones. Teachers can create and store classroom lessons, study materials and activities by using which live games can be played. Moreover, with the free version of Quizlet, it is possible to create and use a range of different activities which may not be possible with some other similar kinds of gaming tools like Triptico where if you do not get registered for the paid version, you will get partial access to many of the interactive activities. It is really easy to use and by following some simple steps, you can devise various tasks for students:

  

Pedagogical justification

If you are confused about the pedagogical rationale or doubtful of the effectiveness of classroom incorporation of techno-games, here is a boost up for you. Ushioda (2013) states that in the ELT classes, gaming tools can help students to be motivated while focusing on developing their grammatical accuracy in English. Stockwell (2013) summarizes that computer-mediated games and instructions can bring novelty into the class and it creates room for individualized instruction and non-judgmental feedback which help to create a motivating environment where students can work autonomously. Not only that, while playing digital online games in the classroom for learning, the students’ “self is affirmed, the individual feels authentic and is motivated to continue with current and similar activities” (Henry, 2013, p. 142).

But, what’s about the teachers? Don’t they need motivation? In this regard, Stockwell (2013) asserts that, when teachers can observe positive learner attitude and increased motivation which result from tech games, they also become motivated to teach.

Creating classroom activities

I have provided a demonstration of how you can create a basic and simple classroom activity for learning vocabulary while teaching reading. If you have time, you can have a look:

Why Quizlet?

If the activities can be created skillfully and administered appropriately, this gaming tool can turn out to be a powerful means for enhancing students’ motivation and engagement in the classroom. By using the content which I mentioned in my video in the previous section, Students can build on their previous knowledge and then can refresh their schemata while participating in that. Theoretically, this activity is based on constructivism where the learners are also believed to be the knowers. Again, while playing live games in pairs or groups, students are negotiating among themselves meaningfully to find out the correct answer which idea is supported by social-constructivist theory. Moreover, students’ engagement with the tech games promotes autonomy and increases their level of motivation which are inextricably related to positive teaching-learning outcomes.

Downsides

Everything in the world has two sides: positive and negative. Quizlet is also not above its limitations. Firstly, for unlocking advanced level activities I am afraid you need to purchase those. Secondly, in-built options for activities are majorly vocabulary-oriented and it is difficult to re-organize those for teaching things other than lexical features. Lastly, a common limitation for technology-enhanced games, those are not suitable for use in low-resource classrooms. Therefore, as flying with an airbus, you need to keep in mind your (and your students’) affordances and access to available resources.   

Caution!

You need to be careful of overdoing it in the classroom which may move your class away from the core pedagogical focus. Do not expect that the use of gaming tools will motivate your students automatically. Only an effective blend of devising the activities and administering those in proper contexts can ensure success! Sometimes, regarding the availability of technological devices and internet connection, you may need to strike a balance between the ‘haves’ and ‘non-haves’.  

Ending notes

The issue of motivating and engaging the students during classroom activities cannot be addressed by a simple search:

‘Google! Google! Dear one! Please tell me which one is the most motivating classroom activity for my students?’

So, what to do?

Come on! Explore! Discover! Challenge yourself! Take risks! Look forward! Try possible way-outs!

What are you waiting for?

Useful resources

https://quizlet.com/blog/how-to-use-quizlet-classes-like-a-pro

https://www.bing.com/videos/search?q=Quizlet+Review&ru=%2fvideos%2fsearch%3fq%3dQuizlet%2bReview%26FORM%3dVARSQP&view=detail&mid=112BC859CB7C72AA6B03112BC859CB7C72AA6B03&&FORM=VDRVRV