"Hot slips", a non-invasive correction technique

Whenever our students are working in pairs or groups, we always notice their mistakes. Then we are faced with the dilemma: Should I correct now or not? The advice is to delay the correction, it is best not to interrupt because we shouldn´t cut a student´s stream of language. And it makes sense. Imagine yourself interrupting with a correction every time the student has made a mistake, it may be too often and may become boring, annoying, and demotivating.
Procedure:

Some years ago, I read an article that suggested a simple technique called “Hot slips”. It consists in noting down mistakes on pieces of paper that the teacher would give to the students after they have finished their activity. In this way, the corrections are personalized and non-intrusive. I tried the technique and it worked fine; however, I found it could be improved. For example, what kind of mistakes should the teacher note down? When exactly should the slips be given: right after the student´s intervention, at the end of the class, while other students are talking? I then modified it a little bit and this is what came up.

1.       Prepare slips of paper to note down mistakes. I am now using a notepad that lets me rip off pages easily.

2.       Decide what kind of mistakes you are going to concentrate on: Grammar, pronunciation, vocabulary, or more than one category. In any case, define an area in the piece of paper to note down the type of mistake. Also, and I suggest this is done too, try and note down good sentences, uses of grammar and/ or vocabulary that exemplify advancement in the student´s performance.

3.       Keep another normal sized piece of paper. This is not to be given to the students. You will note down the most common mistakes here so that you can show them to your students at the end of the activity and/ or plan remedial work based on this information.

4.       Stay with one group/ pair for as long as necessary to get information.

5.       When the activity is finished, pick some mistakes from your own notes and do some remedial work. It is important not to mention who made the mistakes but treat them in general.

6.       Alternatively or additionally, plan remedial work based on the information you collected during the activity.

The advantages of the modified Hot Slips technique add to the two mentioned before, personalization and non-intrusiveness, the element of closure. The activity has an output when the teacher shows the students their mistakes.  The fact that good examples of language use are included in the teacher´s notes, gives the activity a motivating edge: Not everything is criticism.

When giving corrections on the board, I usually prefer an inductive method. I write an example sentence or more with the identified mistakes in them and ask the students to point out what is wrong and why. I also write pairs of sentences which are different only because one has the mistake I am concentrating on and the other doesn´t.

For example:

I have 20 years old. VS I am 20 years old.

The students didn´t went to class.  VS  The students didn´t go to class.

The modified version of Hot Slips has proved to be really effective in error correction and, what is more important, extremely useful for me as a teacher. The best is to try it out and see how it works for you, and even think of some modifications to suit your needs and situation.

Yet another post-it notes activity

A cloze text is an activity where several words have been deleted from a reading text. The hard-core cloze requires the deletion of every nth word, regardless of what part of speech it is. That is, you delete every 8^th word in the text, or every 10^th, etc. A variation, very useful for directing the focus of the lesson, is to delete only verbs, or nouns or adjectives, etc. Also, the teacher may decide to delete any words s/he thinks relevant. The students then have to provide the missing word(s) according to context and grammar.

A challenging way to tackle a reading text is to copy it and create a cloze exercise. You may, if the text is too long, choose to create a cloze for the first paragraph(s) of the reading as an introduction.

In any case, the suggestion in this article has to do with a creative way to get students to do the cloze exercise using post-it notes.

Preparation: Apart from the cloze-text, prepare post-it notes with one answer in each. Produce two or three sets of answers and include three to five “distractors”, that is, words that do not belong in the text, for each set.

Procedure: Once your students have worked out the missing words in the text, get them to form pairs or groups of three to check each other´s answers. While they are at it, stick the post-it notes on the walls. When the students have finished checking their answers, ask them to stand up and look for the missing words in their texts among the post-it notes on the walls. They must work as teams in order to collect the right answers. They must not have their texts at hand while searching for the answers, but they can go back to their seats to consult their texts. You may want to give a time limit for this activity so as to make it more competitive and fun or just let them work at their own pace. This will depend on your class style and other factors you know better than anybody.

Check answers: Once the answers collection has finished, check answers with the whole class, and if you like, assign points to the teams for correct answers. Remember to ask for reasons why they gave such and such answer.

The activity may be adapted by copying the text on a large piece of paper, such as a flipchart or series of flipcharts that you will stick on the board. In this variation, the students will work individually: they fetch post-it notes from the walls and go to the enlarged text and place words in their corresponding space.

Reflection: As a final stage, it is advisable for this type of exercise to get students to work in their teams and reflect on how they arrived at the answers they had and why they were right or wrong. This stage will promote metacognition, which means, they will analyse how they know what they know and understand the process of producing language.

How to use post-it notes in a reading lesson

We are all familiar with those yellow pieces of paper with the sticky back used to remind us of important information. They are really useful in everyday tasks but they can also come in handy when trying to introduce variety and fun to our reading lesson.

This activity can be adapted to any text, weather it has true/ false questions already incorporated or not.

Materials: some two or three post-it notes per student and a reading text.

Preparation: Copy from the textbook and/ or write your own TRUE/ FALSE sentences for the reading text you are using in class. Write one sentence in each post-it note. Depending on the length of the text and the number of students in your class, you will have to repeat some sentences, or write two similar sentences but with a slight difference to get students thinking. Then, stick them on the walls around the class.

Procedure: After the students have worked with the texts, form pairs and tell them to stand up and collect as many post-it notes as they can. One student must collect TRUE statements and the other FALSE ones.  As soon as each student has decided if the statement in his post-it note is true or false he must mark it T or F. When all the post-it notes have been collected, they should get together and confirm if they have collected the statements in the post-it notes correctly. They should re-read the passage. During the collection of the post-it notes, the students cannot have their books and/ or texts with them, they must use their memory. However, they can go back to their seats to consult the text. They may not talk to other people to get help. If you want to make it competitive, you can assign points for good answers and declare a winner at the end of the task. When checking answers all together, ask for support to their true/ false answers.

The same procedure may be adapted for other types of reading tasks. For example, instead of true/ false statements, the post-it notes may carry questions to which the students must find an answer to in the text. Alternatively, the post-it notes may form a “chain” of events as described in the text. The students must collect them and put them in order.

The activity is basically a true/ false task; however, the fact that the students have to stand up and walk and remember information make the activity fun and a bit more demanding than just circling Ts or Fs in the course book. The element of competitiveness will also add more fun to the activity. If by any chance you are unable to use post-it notes, cards and even pieces of paper may be used and stuck on the walls using blu-tack or cello tape.

Literaure in the EFL classroom

In the photo: The author of this post and the participants in the workshop "Teaching English Using Literature" with their copies of "American Themes" and "My Town".

Last Saturday 26^th October, I was invited to give a short talk about the use of Literature in the teaching of English. This happened at the Universidad del Pacífico Teachers´ Congress. During the talk we discussed some possible ways in which Literature, specially literary writing techniques, can help students develop a better sense of the way language works. We also had the great opportunity of introducing the new Department of State publication “American Themes”, which we gave out to the participants together with “My Town”, a selection of texts by writers on American cities, thanks to the Regional English Language Office led by David Fay in Lima.

Using literature to teach/ learn English is an attractive alternative. In the first place, Literature is independent from any methodology. Teachers can insert literary works at any time in their curriculum and they can make the piece fit their teaching topics, vocabulary and grammar. Secondly, Literature becomes a tool for students to develop their language skills further from the textbook. What is more, Literature provides authentic, valuable and rich contexts for personal enrichment and growth thanks to its suggestive power and universality, variety and interest.

Apart from the obvious and natural place of Literature as a source of reading material, we teachers can use it as a springboard for other connected activities such as debates on the different “readings” a text may have for diverse readers. Also, we can adapt some innovative literary techniques to help our students develop their writing skills. Although the objective will not be to produce literary works, our students will have the opportunity to explore the language and have fun with it.

One such technique is called “Erasure”. The writer uses a published text, such a newspaper article, and a felt tip pen. Then, s/he erases parts of the text and keeps others s/he likes. The resulting piece is a new text which, even though it is using words from an existing one, has a message that the author has given to it. The technique is used by writers belonging to the L=A=N=G=U=A=G=E Movement, a group of poets who experiment with Chance Operations, techniques that try to give randomness a place in the production of literary works.

Another technique we presented was giving the text a limit in the number of words. We introduced the participants to Drabbles, a short narrative form of producing flash fiction, where the text has to have exactly one hundred words. The advantage for us teachers is that the fact that there is a limit in the number of words, will force students to edit and rethink about new and creative ways to say what they want to say in order to enforce the 100-word rule.

More information and examples of the techniques in use can be found on the following websites:

L=A=N=G=U=A=G=E Poets: http://www.poets.org/viewmedia.php/prmMID/5661

Erasure: http://www.poetryfoundation.org/features/video/239

Drabbles: http://rms.squidoo.com/drabble

The Kentucky Fried Chronicles part 1

 The Study of the United States Institute –SUSI for short – on Contemporary American Literature is hosted by the University of Louisville, Kentucky, which happens to be hometown of KFC and of one of the most amazing athletes of all time: Muhamad Ali.

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I was lucky to have been chosen to be part of the group of sixteen scholars from all over the world who will be based in Louisville for the following six weeks. Upon arrival, I learned that Peru was one of the three countries that were participating in the institute for the first time, Namibia and Burma are also first timers. The other countries represented here are Boznia-Herzegovina, Cameroon, Indonesia, India, Iraq, Jordan, Pakistan, China, Romania, Russia, Syria, Tunisia and Zambia.

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On Friday, we were gathered for the first time at the international Center; but things did not take off so quickly, it might have been the KFC we were served (for the first and only time, we were told) or it may have been the long trip. The thing is, right now we all feel as if we had known each other for ages: the jokes go in and out but, most importantly, the respect for each other as individuals and for our cultures is always the first consideration and the bond that has made us a solid group.

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Tom Bryers, the director of the institute and famous in Spain as the Tomate Vengador, has been so far giving us introductory sessions on the concepts we need to be able to deal with to begin to try interpretations of the literary works we have to read and to connect those works to the culture of the United States expressed in its way of life, architecture, society, etc.

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One of the most surprising things that has happened so far is the proclamation of the sixteen scholars in the SUSI Scholarship as Honorary Citizens of Louisville. We had the opening dinner on Monday night and during the speeches that are typically given on these occasions, Tom Bryers announced that the representative of the Mayor of the City had come to present us with a diploma. We were called, one by one, and got it from the Mayor´s representative. A complete surprise and an honor we all expect to be up to.

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The days go by as we get on track with the works of poetry and narrative we will study, “deconstruct” some may say, in a city that is a nice place to be, hot at times, rainy at others, but with a quiet air that makes it a perfect place to study and develop a view of the American society through its literature.

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Something to say about: collocations

A very important area of learning a language is the correct use of vocabulary in the right contexts, specially the combinations that form fixed phrases, that is: collocations. To a native of Spanish, some word combinations sound right but for the native English folk they don´t. And literal translations don´t help much!!! Take for example the Spanish phrase “tomar el pelo”. We know the corresponding phrase is “pull someone ´s leg”, but if you want to translate it word by word, the result is at least confusing if not really bluffing.

The point is, vocabulary is a hard cookie, and we teachers need to inform ourselves before we “teach” something misleading like “take vacations”. Happily, and conveniently enough for us, the Internet has very good resources we could call “virtual donkey killers” (just kidding, the phrase is an invention). Among them, we can find dictionaries and thesaurus. However, the tool I have found extremely useful to clear any doubts (like the one on “take vacations”) is the Collocations Dictionary. Here you can enter a word and in return the dictionary will give you the possible word combinations, or collocations.

Have a field trip using the dictionary…and learning more.

Free online resources for teachers

This summer I decided to give a touch of technology to my class, but without spending money. I knew and have used Moodle , probably the most popular educational platform, so I performed a simple search that tipped me to the site freemoodle.org where you can host a class for free, provided it is open to everybody. I requested and was granted permission to create a course.

So far, the experience has had its ups and downs. On the lighter side, I can tell you Moodle is a great tool. You can upload any kind of material: text, video, audio, photo, pdf, word, excel, ppt, Hot Potatoes, links, YouTube, you name it! Then, the functionalities it offers are improving all the time. Right now, you can create online quizzes where you can determine the timing of the test, the kind of feedback you give, and then the score goes directly to the Grade Book so your students (and you, with the downloadable grade book facility) can have the record of grades at hand. There are other tools available for the curious teacher who wants to spend some time exploring the platform.

On the other hand, the time you spend on creating a course might be a problem. Specially if you are not familiar with the tool: you have to learn the ropes first! Then, you have to really become a pain in the neck with your students to get them to use the tool. Happily I have achieved this, but there still some who are waiting to the last moment to come an say: Sorry, teacher, I didn´t know. You know what I mean!

Another tool I am using (again really) is Markin4. This free programme lets you mark written texts by inserting notes and commentaries into it. Then you save the corrected work in a browser compatible file and send it to your student so s/he can see the feedback. You can ask your students to write a composition, send it to you on the email and when you got it, you copy/ paste it onto the Markin4window and viola! You are marking the text online.

I hope you find these tools as useful and exciting as I have. I assure you will be fascinated!