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Experimental Practice Demand High Teaching in the ELT Classroom

Simon Richardson Word Count: 2499

2 Contents Introduction: Description Demand High Tweaks Objectives Evaluation Commentary Post-Lesson Evaluation Action Plan for Future Professional Development Page 3 Page 4 Page 6 Page 7 Page 8 Page 9 Page 10

Bibliography Appendices

Page 12

1. Learner Involvement in answering the teachers questions (Scrivener & Underhill, 2012, http://demandhighelt.files.wordpress.com/2012/06/demand-highobservation-task-2-tracking-the-question-pathway-au-js-pub.pdf) 2. Teacher Questionnaire 3. Student Questionnaire

3 Introduction Throughout the professional development stage of the DELTA, I have been striving to improve the way in which I communicate with my students. This is not simply a matter of giving clearer instructions or using more concept checking questions, but making sure of the opportunity to learn rather than merely receive feedback at the Teacher-Student interaction stages of a class. I currently feel that it is difficult to ensure that all students have a positive and validated interaction with me in the classroom, due to varying confidence levels and dominance of particular students in whole-class feedback. This is something I have noticed not just in my PDR lessons, but across classrooms throughout my career. Furthermore, accepting and dealing with mixed levels in the classroom can be a challenge. I have not always felt that the students with the higher levels of English are consistently challenged in my classes, because of the need to give extra support to weaker students. An example of this is working with questions and answers. I find that if students volunteer answers it is because they are confident of them being correct, but once the correct answer has been accepted, moving on means that I have forgotten the other students and their answers. Importantly, there is no analysis as to how these answers were arrived at. At times I have felt too intent on following my main aim in the classroom, which is centred around the area of language being studied in any particular lesson, rather than pinpointing the moment within a class at which a learner could benefit from my personalised input and therefore learn at the moment when they most want to. For these reasons, I am looking to re-evaluate some of my interaction patterns within the classroom, so I have chosen to experiment with some tweaks suggested by Demand High that are specific to addressing this problem.

4 Description - Demand High Tweaks Demand High is concerned with upgrading student language at the moment when they need it. Jim Scrivener writes that demand that comes precisely at the point where the learner is capable of taking the next steps forward and helping the learner meet that demand, rather than ignore it. This is a doable demand. (Scrivener & Underhill, 2012) This means assessing the teachers management of the classroom and allowing students more time to negotiate answers with each other, discuss reasons and hypotheses, and argue or agree. The idea of making sure that the teacher is not a hub where all answers go to is central to this idea, and it is in this shift of balance where we can see that the principles behind this approach very much follow Caleb Gattagnos idea of The Subordination of teaching to learning, the main principle behind The Silent Way. Demand High suggests a number of classroom tweaks to traditional methods, which are focussed on challenging students and focussing on the subordination of the activity to deeper on-the-spot learning.

Not rubberstamping / Not seeing the teacher as a hub Within the classroom, it is all too tempting to acknowledge the first correct answer given, something that Scrivener and Underhill have labelled as rubberstamping. The problem with this technique is that the way the answer was arrived at is not being explored. Further to this, other students may not have arrived at the same conclusion, and their incorrectness has not been explored. The tweak to this technique suggests that instead of simply accepting the first correct answer, we should withhold validation and ask another student to agree or disagree with the initial hypothesis, inviting them to compare why they arrived at the answers they did. During this interaction, the teacher can act as an observer, noticing the learners who

5 are unsure and pinpointing why they are unsure by inviting them to speak. A potential flowchart of this technique is displayed in Appendix 1. By encouraging this extended interaction period between students in which the role of the teacher is decreased, we can see that Demand High follows the Comprehensible Output hypothesis, put forward by Swain. Rod Ellis references this in Second Language Acquisition, stating that Output can serve a consciousness-raising function by helping learners to notice gaps in their interlanguagesSecond, output helps learners to test their hypotheses. (Ellis, 1997, P.49) If the teacher is seen as a hub where validation occurs, learners have reduced opportunity to test hypotheses, which is an important principle behind the output hypothesis. However, Krashen does not believe that the notion of pushed output is beneficial, as not all students will be comfortable with being forced to speak or provide hypotheses, and the action of doing so will raise the affective filter, making the task of language acquisition more difficult. Rather, he believes that L2 acquisition takes place when a learner understands input that contains grammatical forms that are at i+1 (Krashen in Ellis, 1997, P.47) My classroom experience indicates that this is not the case though. Cultural background can dictate that learners are initially used to learning by receiving comprehensible input, but I firmly believe that students respond to and enjoy the challenge of having their output pushed and while there may be a period of acclimatisation, learners can learn to provide output. It is simply a case of introducing them and helping them to adjust to a new style of learning that may merely be unfamiliar, rather than unhelpful.

6 Working one on one within the group The idea of helping students upgrade in the classroom is central to Demand High. It can be that we focus on the goal established in our lesson aims and drive the student machine collectively towards that aim, making as sure as we can that it is reached by the end of the lesson. However, Underhill believes that there are often students who do not get the opportunity to upgrade anything specific in this way. He has taken the mechanics of one-to-one teaching and applied some of them in the classroom, finding that the whole group was magnetized by the work that the individual was doing in front of them, by seeing the moves of learning made visible just for half a minute. (Underhill, 2012, http://demandhighelt. wordpress.com/discussions/) The principle then is that other students will benefit from observing the one-to-one experience and will then be able to use that observation for their own insights. The challenge here is making sure that nonparticipating students are not ignored, and that they are somehow engaged in this learning process. The suggestion is that these individual interactions should be short, clear and focussed on a skill that all students can relate to, while the teacher maintains the attention of students on the periphery of this interaction by looking at other students as if to say Hey this is pretty interesting. (Underhill, 2012, http://demandhighelt. wordpress.com/discussions/)

Objectives How do students react to one-on-one teaching within the classroom? Does it enable them to produce language that is upgraded? How do peripheral students react while one-on-one teaching is happening? Are they engaged, noticing the mechanics of learning?

7 How do students respond to having their ideas challenged by other students? Is there an expectation within a classroom that only the teacher can validate or challenge? How do students respond to being told No? Are they motivated to persevere until they receive teacher praise, or do they feel overly pressured? Do all students respond positively to pushed output?

Evaluation I am going to provide observing teachers with an observation task to be completed during the lesson (Appendix 2). The task requires focus specifically on the students and their reactions to the tweaks outlined in the description stage of the essay. They will be asked to comment on student reaction, levels of engagement during one-on-one interaction and what they actually produce when interacting with each other and with the teacher. I will also video the class with the camera focussed on the students so that I can watch the video following the lesson and complete the same questionnaire myself. I am interested here in finding out whether there were specific times during the class where some students were not engaged, or whether a high engagement level was maintained by all students at all times. Also, whether all students appear to benefit from pushed output, or if they appear uncomfortable or negative about the experience. Finally, I want teachers to comment on the extent of which the overall lesson aim became of secondary importance to the moment at which these teacher-student or student-student interactions were taking place, as I wish to be able to evaluate whether Demand High techniques are merely additions to a lesson, or whether they actually become the focus of the lesson itself.

8 Students will also be given a feedback form in which they will be asked to comment on their own feelings when directly involved and not directly involved in one-to-one interactions, as well as their reactions to other students challenging their ideas or offering corrections (Appendix 3). I am specifically interested here in levels of motivation, interest and comfort as well as whether they felt they had learnt something during the lesson. I will be asking them to grade their feelings on a scale of 1-5 in order to be able to compare all students, as simple yes / no questions would not allow me to evaluate each student individually, something which I am keen to do before reflecting on my lesson, seeing as a number of my in-class interactions will be focussing on individual students.

Commentary I have chosen some of the techniques suggested by Demand High as I believe that they will be effective in providing students with a greater challenge within the classroom, without putting them under undue pressure (referred to as undoable demand by Scrivener). I am looking to balance student focus within the classroom, giving more passive or lower level students the chance to be able to come away from one of my classes knowing that they have learnt something specific and personalised, which I believe will increase motivation levels. Further to this, both of my classes on the DELTA course have been of mixed levels, meaning that there is less challenge for higher level students within the class. The aim here is to also provide them with an upgrade that they can take away. Both classes have also had students who have tended to dominate, and the idea here is that through this change of focus and interaction pattern, other students can get more opportunity to volunteer ideas.

9 While I believe that there is clear value to all students when the teacher is addressing them, the value of students interacting, scaffolding and challenging each other is not to be understated, and it is specifically in feedback stages where I want to reduce my role and hand over the class to the students. At the moment, I have found that classes can become dependent on the teacher at certain times, and this can lead to reduced output. I believe that this is especially true of East Asian classes, where students seldom volunteer to speak. I believe that the Demand High techniques could be applied to these classes with great effect, encouraging students to speak at an earlier point of their learning and therefore to become accustomed to this interaction pattern at a lower level.

Post Lesson Evaluation In the one-on-one phases of the lesson, the students involved responded well in the main, but it was noticeably dependent on confidence levels of that particular student. This was reflected in the feedback, in which two students expressed concern at the pressure of feeling singled out leading to embarrassment. However, the majority responded orally that they were in the class to learn and mirrored this on the feedback forms. When prompted to repeat a recasted phrase faster, most students responded positively. A few giggled, but this may have been to lack of exposure to the technique. Noticeably, students on the periphery of these interactions responded excellently. Some were mouthing the phrases themselves, which was noted by the observing teachers. In addition, the feedback suggests that they found this part of the lesson extremely helpful in terms of learning new chunks and having to the chance to see them modelled, practised and developed.

10 I felt that encouraging students to challenge each other and volunteer multiple answers was a positive technique in the lesson and the students participated well in collaborative feedback, but they did not really challenge or correct each other much as a group, so I did not have as much opportunity to observe the effects of this technique as I would have liked. That said, the majority of students stated in the feedback that they had no issues with being corrected or challenged by other students within the class, mentioning again that they were in the class to learn. Generally speaking then, students seemed to believe that pushed output merely provided them with the chance to learn more effectively and more quickly. Furthermore, I was pleased to see that these stages and interaction patterns did not detract from the lesson aim, an assertion that was agreed with by my observing peers. In fact, the use of one-on-one techniques served to add depth to the language clarification stage of the class.

Action Plan for Future Professional Development One-on-one teaching with low level learners:

I want to further explore the use of one-on-one teaching within the classroom. The opportunity to improve fluency through requesting students repeat faster proved particularly successful. However, I believe that this technique would be more effective in classes where the students are comfortable with the teacher. I am not convinced that this technique would be met favourably with unconfident or low level learners, and this is something I would like to experiment with. Further encouraging other students to challenge each other:

I did not feel that this was particularly successful, and I want to use this technique to generate further discussion within the classroom, whilst reducing my role. I am going to experiment with questions such as What do you think? Do you agree? or even

11 prompting debate by openly disagreeing: I dont think thats right. What do you think? in order to push output in the form of debate. Further depth in the interaction pattern:

I would like to experiment with the use of Demand High questions such as Can you say that again with a different verb? or Can you say that again in a different way? in order to encourage creativity and wordplay in the class. I would like to see how much can reasonably be demanded of a student in order to discover if there is a consistent line between doable and undoable demand. In addition, I want to see how much time can be spent on these interactions without detracting from the lesson aim, and whether increased focus on this area of the class indeed magnifies the learning process and delivers personalised student upgrades.

12 Bibliography Books Ellis, R. 1997, Second Language Acquisition, Oxford University Press Articles Scrivener, J. & Underhill, A. 2012, http://www.guardian.co.uk/education/2012/oct/16/demand-high-teachingchallenge-students, The Guardian Underhill, A. 2012, http://demandhighelt. wordpress.com/discussions/

13 Appendix 1

14 Appendix 2 Teacher Questionnaire 1. During one-to-one teacher-student interaction, how are peripheral students reacting? To what extent are they engaged?

2.

How motivated did students appear to be when: Told no? Corrected or challenged by other students?

3.

How do you feel students responded to being singled out and pushed to speak? (Look specifically at weaker and less confident students)

4.

To what extent do you feel that working one-to-one with students and encouraging a more varied and student-focussed interaction pattern at feedback stages takes over the class and distracts from the lesson aim? Do you think this is positive, negative or simply alternative?

15 Appendix 3 Student Questionnaire I would like to know how you felt during my lesson today. Could you please read and answer the following questions with a number 1-5 and write any extra comments that you feel are important. Thank you! (1= Strongly Agree 2=Agree 3=Neither agree nor disagree 4=Disagree 5=Strongly Disagree) 1. I was interested when the teacher was working with another student. 1 Comments: 2 3 4 5

2.

I felt comfortable when the teacher worked with me alone while the other students watched. 1 2 3 4 5

Comments:

3.

If the teacher said No to me, it made me feel bad. 1 2 3 4 5

Comments:

4.

I dont like it when other students correct me: only the teacher should do that. 1 2 3 4 5

Comments:

5.

I dont want the teacher to ask me to speak. Ill speak when I want to. 1 2 3 4 5

Comments:

16 6. I feel like I learned something important today. 1 Comments: 2 3 4 5