You may have heard of Sir Dave Brailsford. He is the boss of Team Ineos, formerly Team Sky, the cycling team who have dominated road cycling for a good few years. He is partly known for implementing the notion of “marginal gains” to make his team the best in the world. In cycling this could mean outdoing opponents by having a slightly lighter bike, slightly lower drag clothing and helmets, tyres with marginally less friction, better controlled food intake for competitors, etc. The idea is that these marginal improvements in various areas add up to a significant advantage overall.
After observing some lessons recently, it struck me that this concept of making minor improvements to practice in various areas might apply to language lessons. These tweaks could add up to something significant over time. What do I mean? Let’s look at some possibilities..
When working with a text, if you are using comprehension questions in English, could you do this through target language means instead. English questions check comprehension, but they reduce the amount of TL listening input and output which students experience.
Again, when working on a written text, instead of providing ready-made questions in the TL, why not dictate these beforehand? As well as providing more TL input, phonics practice and attention to written detail, it gets students thinking about the text before they tackle it (“pre-activating knowledge schemas” as the jargon would have it).
When playing a Battleships game to practise verb conjugations, why not insist on students providing extra elements to accompany the verb, making the task a little more communicative and challenging by forcing students to retrieve more chunks from memory.
Instead of setting a list of isolated words to memorise for a test, why not supply a list of phrases or short sentences containing the target word? This gives students a greater chance of being able to produce longer chunks in the future.
If you like working with sentence builders, why not extend their use by adding more conversational elements to your lesson sequence, taking the activities beyond reading aloud and translation, to more authentic communicative exchanges?
When working with a written text, instead of doing just one exercise on it, e.g. the one in the text book, how about working on it more intensively through a range of different exercises to ensure the language is processed more thoroughly through greater repetition and manipulation of the language?
With an audio or video listening text, instead of working through some comprehension tasks (true/false, matching, questions etc), why not supply the transcript and work on the text more intensively with a range of activities which give students a greater sense if mastery and self efficacy? Showing the text and listening at the same time supplies scaffolding, reinforces reading and phonics skill, as well as developing comprehension.
When running question-answer routines from the front of the class, could you exploit a greater range of questioning types and other interactions (e.g. giving false statements to corrects, supplying starts of sentences to complete) and could you incorporate more “turn and talk” pair work as part of the mix?
When doing a listening comprehension lesson, could you always include a “pre-activity” task to get pupils interested in what they are about to listen to or read? Research suggests that doing this can aid future recall of information.
When working through a sequence of PowerPoint pictures or a picture story, as well as getting students to produce single sentence answers, could you include opportunities for them to make longer utterances as part if the teaching sequence? “With a partner, see who can put together the longest sequence if sentences, words or phrases.”
My feeling is that teachers can always find little tweaks to their practice which produce marginal gains in terms of input and output. Over four or five years these can add up, increasing the total amount of target language processed and produced. Part of one’s own development could be to analyse existing practice and seek small improvements.
After observing some lessons recently, it struck me that this concept of making minor improvements to practice in various areas might apply to language lessons. These tweaks could add up to something significant over time. What do I mean? Let’s look at some possibilities..
When working with a text, if you are using comprehension questions in English, could you do this through target language means instead. English questions check comprehension, but they reduce the amount of TL listening input and output which students experience.
Again, when working on a written text, instead of providing ready-made questions in the TL, why not dictate these beforehand? As well as providing more TL input, phonics practice and attention to written detail, it gets students thinking about the text before they tackle it (“pre-activating knowledge schemas” as the jargon would have it).
When playing a Battleships game to practise verb conjugations, why not insist on students providing extra elements to accompany the verb, making the task a little more communicative and challenging by forcing students to retrieve more chunks from memory.
Instead of setting a list of isolated words to memorise for a test, why not supply a list of phrases or short sentences containing the target word? This gives students a greater chance of being able to produce longer chunks in the future.
If you like working with sentence builders, why not extend their use by adding more conversational elements to your lesson sequence, taking the activities beyond reading aloud and translation, to more authentic communicative exchanges?
When working with a written text, instead of doing just one exercise on it, e.g. the one in the text book, how about working on it more intensively through a range of different exercises to ensure the language is processed more thoroughly through greater repetition and manipulation of the language?
With an audio or video listening text, instead of working through some comprehension tasks (true/false, matching, questions etc), why not supply the transcript and work on the text more intensively with a range of activities which give students a greater sense if mastery and self efficacy? Showing the text and listening at the same time supplies scaffolding, reinforces reading and phonics skill, as well as developing comprehension.
When running question-answer routines from the front of the class, could you exploit a greater range of questioning types and other interactions (e.g. giving false statements to corrects, supplying starts of sentences to complete) and could you incorporate more “turn and talk” pair work as part of the mix?
When doing a listening comprehension lesson, could you always include a “pre-activity” task to get pupils interested in what they are about to listen to or read? Research suggests that doing this can aid future recall of information.
When working through a sequence of PowerPoint pictures or a picture story, as well as getting students to produce single sentence answers, could you include opportunities for them to make longer utterances as part if the teaching sequence? “With a partner, see who can put together the longest sequence if sentences, words or phrases.”
My feeling is that teachers can always find little tweaks to their practice which produce marginal gains in terms of input and output. Over four or five years these can add up, increasing the total amount of target language processed and produced. Part of one’s own development could be to analyse existing practice and seek small improvements.
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