72 (136) 2016

Pass

wor

d to

Mat

ura

2016

Password to matura 2016 series Episode 3

Mixed levels in a team - giving lyceum students a sporting

chance to nail the exam

Karolina Kotorowicz-Jasińska

❯❯❯

acmillan z dumą prezentuje kolejną serię artykułów, tym razem adresowaną w całości do

nauczycieli języka angielskiego w polskich szkołach ponadgimnazjalnych. Chcemy przyjrzeć się ponownie specyficznym problemom i potrzebom językowym polskich uczniów, wynikającym m.in. z czekającego ich egzaminu dojrzałości z języka obcego, ale nie tylko. W trzecim, ostatnim już odcinku tej serii, Karolina Kotorowicz-Jasińska przedstawia problem przygotowania tej samej klasy do dwóch poziomów matury oraz proponuje szereg rozwiązań do pracy z uczniami o zróżnicowanym poziomie biegłości językowej.

One of the headaches of most, if not all, language teachers is working with a group of students at different levels of linguistic competence. Mixed ability classes, which is what this problem actually boils down to, seem to be a problem for teachers in all sectors of educations and the upper secondary schools are no different. It looks like the first nine years of education do little to even out proficiency levels; on the contrary, the differences between individual students deepen year in year out and by the time students begin their lyceum education their language abilities constitute a whole array of linguistic competences, from very basic to relatively advanced.

Karolina Kotorowicz-Jasińska

An experienced teacher and teacher trainer, Karolina has taught different age groups at all proficiency levels. Her experience involves working in primary and middle-schools, both public and international. Having graduated from PhD studies at the English Department of UMCS in Lublin, she is now working on her doctoral dissertation on academic listening. Karolina is also an author of several publications, including Repetytorium Gimnazjalisty (Macmillan 2015).

82 (136) 2016

Pass

wor

d to

Mat

ura

2016

❯❯❯

However, the story does not finish there. In the upper secondary classroom, there arises an extra challenge connected with students’ mixed abilities. It is not only the learners’ competence levels that vary, but their goals in learning the language vary as well, as some students will pursue the basic level of matura exam, while others will set out to prepare for its extended version. This means that apart from adjusting the teaching techniques to different proficiency levels, we also need to develop different exam skills.

If this was not complicated enough, there is a great probability that some of your students will decide to switch from the basic to the extended level of their English matura exam with just a few months’ notice, right before their final choices have to be made. Chances are that the recent changes in the exam regulations, which oblige every matura candidate to take at least one exam at an extended level, will make many a student change their minds and decide to try their luck with the more advanced exam paper. I cannot imagine any teacher being comfortable with such a situation, especially that the teacher’s work is assessed indirectly by their students’ exam results. It therefore seems more than reasonable to take a twin-track approach to teaching English from the first grade of lyceum onwards. How to go about it on a daily basis without going crazy? The following article is an attempt to answer this question and look for useful solutions which can make teaching more effective and, more importantly, help our learners nail the exam.

It seems mandatory to underline at this point that, in fact, all classes are mixed level classes and we need to accept it as a fact. As Rinvolucri states ‘we do not teach a group, but thirty separate people. Because of this, the problem of mixed abilities in the same room seems absolutely natural (…)’ (1986, p. 17). This does not mean, however, that we cannot adopt a bunch of teaching strategies which will makes our lives slightly less complicated. Here are some of my ways of alleviating the problem at hand.

Towards composite fluency

If we are to teach mixed ability classes, preparing for different levels of the exam,

and make the process effective, we need to look for some common ground - an area which calls for similar techniques, whatever the proficiency level, whatever the test tasks in the exam paper. I believe such a common denominator for both levels is fluency. What I mean by fluency in this context, however, is fluency which involves various aspects of language use, not only the ease of expression while speaking, which fluency traditionally refers to. In other words, being a fluent language user, as opposed to a mere fluent speaker, is multi-faceted and involves many areas, all of which need to be catered for, no matter which level of the exam students intend to take. They include:❶ Having a decently developed knowledge of

grammatical and lexical forms of language, which are automatically retrieved whenever needed; being aware of the fact that how we say things actually matters and the choice of lexico-grammar features is not arbitrary;

❷ Understanding texts they are exposed to and being able to refer to those text in the way they are expected to; achieving at least a basic level of reading and listening automaticity and comprehending texts without struggling too much;

❸ Expressing their thoughts easily, without stumbling or any major breakdowns in communication; being able to communicate ideas accurately, choosing the right structures and/or vocabulary so that one can be understood well enough for the communication to run fairly smoothly.

Clearly, fluency in communication is just one of several aspects of fluency and, above all, not detached form accuracy. This is what being a fluent user of English means to me and what I strive for in my everyday teaching practice. Developing such a composite fluency is comprehensive enough and ensures the diversity of activities in the classroom.I would say that the only element that is missing in such a model of fluency is the exam itself. In order to acknowledge exam skills and strategies in the upper secondary curriculum, there is one more aspect to be added to the model above, namely:❹ Being a fluent exam-taker; attaining

a certain degree of test-wiseness, being aware of the language forms targeted in various exam tasks, and being able to automatically retireve them during the exam.

92 (136) 2016

Pass

wor

d to

Mat

ura

2016

❯❯❯

Going long-distance

I’m sure you will agree with me that incorporating such a model of fluency means, paradoxically, concentrating a bit less on the exam itself and instead setting ourselves goals which go beyond the matura results. However, this is exactly how we can make mixed levels work - if exam goals are different, let us focus on something that is the same for everyone.How shall we do that? There are a few techniques which, to my mind, will work for both basic and advanced learners and which are easy to implement as early as the first level of an upper secondary course. They are: providing students with the right

scaffolding, making use of the mother tongue, developing the use of English skills, juxtaposing basic language with advanced

skills, raising linguistics awareness.

Mind you, none of these teaching strategies is restricted to matura training only. They all aim to develop learners’ general language competences, building their self-confidence, and make them ready for the ‘real world’. If you are interested to know how each of the techniques works in the classroom, keep on reading. The following sections describe each of them in some detail.

Team supportThe one thing which every student finds beneficial, whatever their level of proficiency, is any kind of linguistic support enabling the learner to perform to the best of their abilities. Such scaffolding ‘given to learners while their language system is ‘under construction’’ (Thornbury 2006) can take various forms and paves the way for fluency, or automaticity, of certain aspects of language use, be it comprehension, production or structure building. For instance, while practicing grammar (present perfect in the example below) we can easily foresee that while students’ linguistic minds are busy working on structures, lexis might constitute an obstacle. In order to help learners internalise present perfect, the activity below provides all the potentially required vocabulary items. Such a procedure is useful for both weaker and stronger students. The poorer ones can focus entirely on the mechanics of creating present

perfect sentences (choosing the right auxiliary, converting the verbs into past participles, adding the correct time expressions), while the more advanced learners can use the prompts to proceduralize their knowledge of present perfect, i.e. building sentences automatically, perhaps brushing up their pronunciation of contracted forms (I’ve, he’s etc.).

Source: Password 1 Student’s Book, p. 31 (Macmillan 2015)

Giving students language scaffolding is beneficial not only in teaching grammar. Yet another way of providing our students with tailor-made support in their language acquisition is to help them develop productive skills by offering ideas to refer to. It seems to me that the problems our students often have result from not knowing what to say or write, and not just the inability to choose the right target language forms. A good idea for scaffolding in our team of mixed abilities is to give students prompts to follow in their speaking or writing tasks. The prompt can be given to students in either Polish or English - either way learners do not stumble upon the ideas they want to express (like in the activity below).

Source: Password 1 Student’s Book, p. 4 (Macmillan 2015)

Again, such an activity will work for students at different levels - at the basic one they can only restructure the prompts, put the verbs in the correct, forms add any words necessary (which boils down to a kind or gramaticalisation task); at an extended level the prompts can be used for elaborating on the students’ own ideas, making the language they produce more advanced.

102 (136) 2016

Pass

wor

d to

Mat

ura

2016

❯❯❯

L1 back in the gameWhile looking for a common ground for students of diverse proficiency levels, we cannot overlook students’ mother tongue. After all, that’s what they have all mastered equally well! The benefits of introducing the elements of cross-linguistics analysis into the curriculum are numerous - the first language can be used to raise students' awareness of and sensitivity to the linguistic forms, it promotes noticing of the target forms, it helps to clarify areas of difficulty, it offers scaffolding for language production (Śpiewak 2015), to name just a few. Clearly, it seems mandatory that a well-organised language course should refer to L1 as often as possible.

What is more, systematic references to Polish have an enormous potential for matura exam preparation at both levels. On the one hand, the use of the mother tongue offers great support to students at a basic level, who still think mainly (if not only) in Polish. Given to students in the form of prompts, L1 is likely to help them develop their production skills:

Source: Password 1 Workbook, p. 43 (Macmillan 2015)

On the other hand, introducing elements of L1, comparing its feature to those of L2 and drawing students’ attention to both differences and similarities is very important from the point of view of the extended level of matura exam, which evaluates the candidates' micro-translation skills. Therefore, no exam preparation course should neglect cross-linguistic language work; on the contrary, it should introduce translation activities systematically, as early as possible, starting ‘from day one’ of the first

grade. As in the task below, converting Polish forms into their English equivalents can be performed with very basic language material (present simple and continuous in this case).

Source: Password 1 Student’s Book, p. 12 (Macmillan 2015)

Evidently, translation is one of the skills suitable for the twin-track approach to teaching mixed ability classes mentioned in the introduction to this article.There in one final comment I would like to make on the potential of teaching translation skills to upper secondary students. It has become commonplace to perceive the skill as an advanced one, restricted (at least partially) to the extended part of matura exam. However, isn’t the basic level writing task, to a major extent, a translation activity? After all, this is exactly how most students set out to write the letter - they translate the bullet points in the rubric into English. Once again, it becomes conspicuous that using L1 and introducing a great deal of translation activities will cater for the needs of all students in the class, no matter which level of the exam they intend to take.

Challenge for all playersAs stated in the introduction, we might face a situation in which some of our students decide to take to take the extended exam, although they have been declaring otherwise for the first two years of their upper secondary

112 (136) 2016

Pass

wor

d to

Mat

ura

2016

❯❯❯

education. Bearing in mind an old adage ‘better safe than sorry’, it seems wise to familiarise all students in the class with the extended exam paper and develop all exam skills, such as recognising facts and opinions, managing open cloze activities, producing the target forms (as opposed to merely recognising them) or making references across several texts. It seems all of these advanced exam skills can be introduced with a relatively easy linguistic material. Also, the skills can be practiced without much interference into classroom dynamics, that is without having to divide students into groups of different levels, or giving students different tasks to do. If you look at the Reading Challenge task presented below, it is attached to a reading comprehension section. When students finish doing the matching activity, they are asked to work on text cohesion by adding a sentence to each paragraph.

Source: Password 1 Student’s Book, p. 45 (Macmillan 2015)

If your coursebook does not develop advanced level skills from the beginning of the course, there are a few other techniques or modifications you can implement, for example: while doing multiple choice use of English

tasks, students cover the answer and try to to come up with the missing phrase / word / translation on their own. It imitates what candidates are obliged to do in the extended matura and definitely makes them think about the language a lot more;

students add one or two sentences to a text without breaking up its structure and without distorting its meaning;

students design a task for their peers. They can, for example, write three titles of a short text, of which only one is correct. Students can swap their titles and choose the correct one;

students rewrite two sentences from the text and leave empty spaces where the verbs should be. Give the sentences to their friends to complete, which turns into an open cloze activity from the extended level.

Go pro with language awarenessFinally, what brings the interests of all students in the classroom together is raising linguistic awareness. It involves any educational procedures aimed at making students conscious of linguistic patterns and target forms and adopting an analytical approach to language study. If introduced effectively, such techniques will help learners become reflective language users (or exam takers, for that matter), expressing themselves consciously and paying deliberate attention to target forms (cf. Cichmińska 2016).

One way of promoting conscious perception of the target forms is by engaging students in a deeper processing of texts. In other words, instead of just sliding over texts in the coursebook superficially, we should encourage learners to look at language forms. According to Thornbury (2005), it is a necessary prerequisite for students to notice the language, without which no language acquisition can take place. Therefore, as practitioners we need to constantly look for moments in the lesson which favour noticing, for instance while analysing a short text like the one below. Such an outlook on language acquisition provides arguments in favour of the traditional approach to discrete and explicit language work, i.e. focus on forms (Sheen 2002).

Source: Password 1 Student’s Book, p. 54 (Macmillan 2015)

Consciousness-raising and focus on form are not limited to noticing grammar structures only. In fact, whatever makes students think about the language will make them more aware of the target forms, for example making students decide if two structures are the same

122 (136) 2016

Pass

wor

d to

Mat

ura

2016

❯❯❯

Student’s Book

Password 1 2 3 4

Student’s Book

12

34

Passw

ord M

arta Rosińska Lynda Edw

ards

1 2 3 4Password PassPassPass

A2-B1

Skuteczny program przygotowania do matury Sekcje Step by Step w praktyczny sposób uczą rozwiązywania wszystkich typów zadań; Zestawy Speaking Tests oraz strony Test Practice umożliwiają uczniom sprawdzenie nabytych umiejętności.

Elastyczne rozwiązania dla klas o zróżnicowanych umiejętnościach językowychZadania Challenge! wprowadzają trudniejsze zagadnienia gramatyczne i leksykalne dotyczące tematu lekcji oraz rozwijają umiejętności językowe.

Idealne dostosowanie do potrzeb polskich uczniówPodręcznik zawiera wiele różnorodnych zadań na tłumaczenie oraz ćwiczeń zwracających uwagę polskiego ucznia na różnice językowe i problemy wynikające z tych różnic.

Bogactwo zadań na środki językoweSekcje English in use utrwalają słownictwo i gramatykę z rozdziału w zadaniach na środki językowe; przydatne zestawienia struktur na końcu podręcznika umożliwiają szybką powtórkę.

Password to nowy czteroczęściowy kurs dla szkól ponadgimnazjalnych, który systematycznie przygotowuje zarówno do matury podstawowej, jak i rozszerzonej już od pierwszego poziomu serii. Umożliwia on tym samym osiągnięcie sukcesu na egzaminie maturalnym również tym uczniom, którzy decyzję o wyborze poziomu podejmują w klasie trzeciej.

www.macmillan.pl Marta Rosińska Lynda EdwardsNr MEN 767/1/2015

Password SB1 cover.indd 1 15-10-09 09:46

Password is a new, four-level, double-entry course developed by Macmillan exclusively for Polish lyceum students. One of the key features of this course series is its systematic programme of parallel matura preparation – for both the basic and extended level of the exam from level 1 onwards.

Find out more at www.macmillan.pl

or different in meaning. It is the first step in making students realize that the way they say things actually matters.

Source: Password 1 Student’s Book, p. 42 (Macmillan 2015)

Why is raising language awareness an element not be underestimated? To begin with, it is one of the ways of developing students’ use of English skills, which, as we are well aware of, have been matura candidates’ Achilles’ heel for years. Also, coming back to the topic of this article, language awareness has a great potential for students at both basic and advance levels: it helps weaker students understand the target forms and explicit instruction provides more support, whereas stronger ones are encouraged to adopt a linguist attitude and unravel the mysteries of language they are learning.

Summing up, I am perfectly aware of the fact that teaching mixed ability and mixed level classes will not become effortless and/or straightforward, just by introducing a bunch of extra activities. I am inclined to believe, however, that a certain set of teaching techniques might make the experience a bit less painful for the teacher and slightly more structured and organised. Not to mention the extra benefit of playing it safe and anticipating upper secondary students’ unstable minds. I am also convinced that what might help enormously in managing mixed ability classes is looking beyond matura results. If we do that we will be able to see the same goal for English learning (and teaching, for that matter) regardless of the exams to sit - achieving a certain degree of fluency, which will help our learners survive in the real world. After all, it is more rewarding to prepare students for life, not just for a battery of tests, isn’t it?

References:

Cichmińska, M. 2016. Hidden depths of teaching language resources in lyceum! The Teacher 135 (1), pp. 8 - 14.Rinvolucri, M. 1986. Strategies for a mixed ability group. Practical English Teaching, 7/1, 17.Sheen. R. 2002. Focus on form and focus on forms. ELT Journal 56 (3), pp. 303 - 305.Śpiewak, G. 2015. Polish their English in Lyceum! The Teacher 134 (12), pp. 10 - 15.Thornbury, S. 2005. Uncovering Grammar. Macmillan Education.Thornbury, S. 2006. An A - Z of ELT. Macmillan Education.Ullman, M. T. 2001. The declarative / procedural model of lexis and grammar. Journal of Psycholinguistics Research 30 (1), pp. 37 - 69.