Enhancing and Embedding English in an

Electronic Age

SERBIA 2022
Teacher Training Summer School Management

Czech Secondary School

 SO WHAT HAVE I LEARNT?
• Teaching is a great profession when your students are motivated
• Some students really enjoyed studying from home rather than going to school
• Initially students missed classmates rather than lessons – then they started missing
the lessons
• Teenage students studying from bedrooms don’t like cameras (and neither do I)
• Teachers seemed to give a lot more homework
• Tests made up a lot of online classes
• 21st Century Learning Skills got dumped very quickly
• One or two apps (e.g. Kahoot and Quizlet) got used too frequently
• Final year students panicked about the school leaving exams
• Grades (and lots of them) seem to be very important in Czech secondary education
• Everything gets boring after a while
• Autonomy is very important
• Students need training to become more autonomous
• Humans are creatures of habit, but habits don’t take long to embed
I NEED TO MAKE MY LESSONS MORE

AUTHENTIC

AUTONOMOUS

ASSESSIBLE

ASSORTED
So why authentic?
 Authenticity relates to the language produced by native speakers for native speakers in a
particular language community – Porter and Roberts, Little

Authenticity relates to the language produced by a real speaker/writer for a real audience,
conveying a real message – Morrow; Porter & Roberts; Swaffar; Nunan; Benson & Voller
Authenticity relates to the qualities bestowed on a text by the receiver, in that it is not seen as
something inherent in a text itself, but is imparted on it by the reader/listener – Widdowson; Breen

Authenticity relates to the interaction between students and teacher – van Lier
Authenticity relates to the types of task chosen – Breen; Bachman;vanLier; Benson & Voller;Lewkowicz; Guariento & Morley

Authenticity relates to the social situation of the classroom – Breen; Arnold; Lee; Guariento & Morley; Rost

Authenticity relates to assessment – Bachman; Bachman & Palmer; Lewkowicz

Authenticity relates to culture, and the ability to behave or think like a target language group
in order to be recognized and validated by them - Kramsch
Fitness to the learning process – Hutchinson & Waters

What is authenticity?
 What is authenticity?
• Authentic Learning

• Authentic Situations

• Authentic Materials

• Authentic Tasks

• Authentic Teachers
 Authentic
• Activities that Learning
involve real-world problems and that are
focused on audiences beyond the classroom.

• Use of open-ended inquiry, thinking skills and

metacognition.

• Students engage in discourse and social learning in a

community of learners.

• Students direct their own learning in project work.

 Authentic Situations
• Students learn and practice high frequency
language useful in common communicative
situations

• Lexical phrases are chunked together to enhance

communicative competency

• Target language is linked to situations and modelled

throughout the course
 Authentic Materials
• Produced for another purpose

• Designed to expose the students to new information

• Designed to encourage students to explore the topic at

a deeper level

• Designed to encourage students to use their own

technology to create vlogs, drama etc.
 Authentic tasks
• Students use English to complete the tasks

• Tasks are designed to focus on communication,

collaboration, creativity and critical thinking skills

• Emphasis on pair and group work

 Authentic Teachers
• Ready to converse with students outside the
classroom topic

• Prepared to admit mistakes

• Prepared to laugh and engage naturally

• Willing to share some aspects of their life

I NEED TO MAKE MY LESSONS MORE

AUTHENTIC

AUTONOMOUS
AUTONOMOUS
ASSESSIBLE

ASSORTED
So why autonomous?
What is autonomous learning?

Presentation Title Arial Bold 7 pt 29

 Sometimes it’s easier to describe what autonomy is not:
Autonomy is not a synonym for self-instruction.
(Autonomy is not limited to learning without a teacher.)

In the classroom context, autonomy does not entail an abdication of

responsibility on the part of the teacher.
(It is not a matter of letting the learners get on with things as best they
can.)

On the other hand, autonomy is not something that teachers do to

learners.
(It is not another teaching method.)
David Little
1990
Autonomy is not a single, easily described behaviour.

Autonomy is not a steady state achieved by learners.

 Learner autonomy is:
‘The ability to take charge of one’s own learning’ – Henri Holec (1981)

Determine the objectives

Define the contents
Select methods and techniques
Monitor the procedure of acquisition (rhythm, time, place etc.)
Evaluating what has been acquired
 Learner autonomy is:
‘A learner's capacity to take responsibility for their
learning, which involves planning, the selection of
materials, monitoring learning progress and self-
assessment.’ – Phil Benson 2007
Benson’s five principles for achieving autonomous learning:
1 active involvement in student learning
2 providing options and resources
3 offering choices and decision-making opportunities
4 supporting learners
‘When learners succeed in
5 encouraging reflection developing autonomy, they
not only become better
learners, they also become
more responsible and
critical members of society’
– Phil Benson
In order to be effective we need to:

1. Identify Starting Points

2. Monitor Improvement
3. Evaluate Effectiveness

33
 LEARNING GOALS ARE
AWARENESS

AUTONOMY:LEVELS OF IMPLEMENTATION
HIGHLIGHTED

LEARNERS SELECT
INVOLVEMENT GOALS FROM A CHOICE

LEARNERS MODIFY &

INTERVENTION ADAPT GOALS

LEARNERS CREATE
CREATION THEIR OWN GOALS

LEARNERS GO BEYOND
TRANSCENDENCE THE CLASSROOM

NUNAN
1997
 Look at your own learning routines. Which strategies for
learning do you use? For example:
Dare to guess; make use of clues around you, if you don’t know the exact word use a
synonym. If you don’t know the word you are looking for, it is okay to make a guess. It
doesn’t matter if you are wrong!
Dare to be wrong! Dare to take risks. Learning languages includes situations that may
be confusing. We can all learn from our mistakes.
Dare to ask! There are no stupid questions.
Desire to communicate! You must have a strong desire to get some meaning across.
You can use body language, gestures, and facial expressions.
Look for patterns in the language and analyse them to find form in the language.
Make use of memory techniques.
Be aware of meaning in different situations. The same message can be said in many
ways. Find the appropriate way.
Take advantage of ALL opportunities for using the foreign language. Use the foreign
language in the classroom, as well as everywhere else that you can.
35
 RESOURCE-BASED
APPROACHES
CURRICULUM-BASED TECHNOLOGY-BASED
APPROACHES APPROACHES

AUTONOMY
CLASSROOM-BASED LEARNER-BASED
APPROACHES APPROACHES

TEACHER-BASED
APPROACHES
 Profile of a Successful Autonomous Learner
• Methodical and Disciplined
• Logical and Analytical
• Reflective & Self-Aware
• Curious, Open and Motivated
• Flexible
• Interdependent & Interpersonally Competent
• Persistent & Responsible
• Venturesome & Creative
• Confident with a Positive Self-image
• Independent and Self-Sufficient
• Good Information Seeking and Retrieval Skills
• Knowledge and Skill at Learning Processes
• Can Develop & use Criteria for Evaluation Candy 1991
I NEED TO MAKE MY LESSONS MORE

AUTHENTIC

AUTONOMOUS

ASSESSIBLE
ASSESSIBLE

ASSORTED
So why assessible?
 Children are creative, they love building and making
Useful for teaching young people to work under pressure
things…but as they get closer to GCSEs and A-levels
Not helping students to develop teamwork and collaborative skills
74all that
per cent is squashed
of employers out
use their own of them.
assessment It’s all about rote-
techniques
learning, not about using your imagination, the
system doesn’t measure creativity, it measures what
you can remember of other people’s facts
What do I want my students to learn?

What do my students already know?

How is their knowledge and thinking changing over time?

How aware are they of this change?

What can I do to help them learn?

What evidence do I have that they are improving?

42
 Types of Assessment
1 Achievement assessment
2 Norm-referencing (NR)
3 Mastery learning CR
4 Continuous assessment
5 Formative assessment
6 Direct assessment
7 Performance assessment
8 Subjective assessment
9 Holistic assessment
10 Assessment by others
Taken from CoE CEFR
Proficiency assessment
Criterion referencing (CR)
Continuum CR
Fixed assessment points
Summative assessment
Indirect assessment
Knowledge assessment
Objective assessment
Analytic assessment
Self-assessment
 Types of Assessment

• Achievement assessment • Proficiency assessment

Looking to the past Looking to the future

 Types of Assessment

• Norm-referencing • Criterion Referencing

You came last!

 Types of Assessment
• Mastery learning CR • Continuum CR
A minimum competence standard An achievement approach
– a cut-off point between masters
and non-masters
 Types of Assessment
• Continuous assessment • Fixed assessment points

The final grade reflects

the whole course
 Types of Assessment
Assessment FOR Learning Assessment OF Learning
• Formative assessment • Summative assessment
Formative assessment is like a cook tasting
‘

the soup, summative assessment is when the

customer tastes it’

Jeremy Harmer says that students

often feel that summative tests are
like sudden death events
 Types of Assessment
• Direct assessment • Indirect assessment

Some skills like reading are

almost impossible to test
through direct assessment
 Types of Assessment
• Performance assessment • Knowledge assessment

Provide a sample of language Answer questions

 Types of Assessment
• Subjective • Objective assessment
assessment
More than one correct answer or not
 Types of Assessment
• Holistic Assessment • Analytic Assessment
 Types of Assessment

• Assessment by others • Self-Assessment

I NEED TO MAKE MY LESSONS MORE

AUTHENTIC

AUTONOMOUS

ASSESSIBLE

ASSORTED
ASSORTED
So why assorted?
LOTS
HOTS
 Authentic content
coupled with authentic
tasks
Which animals can you see
in the pictures?
A2

65
A2

66
 T
T

Which four facts F

are false?
T

T
So why not
energise your
teaching with a
bit of……………?
72