Sunday, March 20, 2011

The Role of Learning Objectives in Planning Instruction

Learning objectives state what a student, course or program will achieve or do when provided with certain resources by the end of a specified period of time. A widely used guide to writing learning objectives is the acronym SMART which stands for specific, measurable, achievable, relevant and time-related. Learning objectives need to be specific enough and written in clear language so they accurately describe the purpose of the activity, lesson or course, and guide the planning and development of future lessons; measureable so students’ achievement can be described, assessed and evaluated; achievable for the students’ skill and knowledge levels; relevant and meaningful for the students; and can be accomplished within the available time period.

SMART objectives guide the teacher when planning learning activities. Measureable objectives provide the teacher and students with information needed to plan formative and summative assessment tools to measure the amount of progress that students have made for one or more lesson objectives. This information helps the teacher determine if new learning objectives should be introduced or is re-teaching is needed. Unachievable objectives could result in frustration for the students because the learning activities are beyond their zone of proximal development. Relevant and meaningful objectives and activities that are achievable in the allotted time will be highly motivating and could increase students’ participation and learning.

Clearly stated learning objectives allow the teacher to state why the activities are necessary to advance skills. This reason can then be articulated to the students and other people of interest such as the program co-ordinator.

Program objectives provide necessary information for students when selecting an appropriate course to advance their skills. The objectives guide institutions in developing courses to meet the needs of students at all levels that they intend to serve. Course objectives give teachers information about the approximate level of the students enrolled in the program as well as the expected level of skills and knowledge by the end of the course. Program objectives can be used by teachers to plan specific learning activities, gather resources for the lessons, and plan a timeline in order to ensure all objectives are covered by the end of the program.

Sunday, March 13, 2011

Language Skill Modules - My Reflections

Studying the language skills (listening, speaking, reading and writing) separately has enabled me to focus on the terminology and importance of developing each skill in a language learner in order to achieve communicative competence.

I can’t help but notice the overlap in the language aspects from one modality to the next. For example, activating prior knowledge before a learning activity enhances students’ ability to apply known ideas, integrate new ideas and participate in listening, speaking, reading and writing tasks. Expanding learners’ syntactic, world, socio-cultural, topic and genre knowledge improves students’ language learning in all four skill areas. A student’s reason for engaging in a language activity is also common across modalities. For instance, a student’s goal may be to get information by listening and/or reading; or to convey information by writing and speaking.

Although teachers may set lesson and assessment objectives that focus on one language skill, there is almost always another modality involved. For example, the activity of interviewing a partner with a list of questions and then introducing each other to the rest of the class may have a speaking skill objective as the focus for development and/or assessment; however, reading the questions, listening for answers, and writing the answers on the paper are also involved.

I think integrating more than one language skill in learning activities makes the activities more authentic, interesting and provides more opportunities for students to expand their language development.

Sunday, March 6, 2011

Listening Skills - How Important Are They?

Listening is perhaps the most neglected of the language skills. Reading and writing are associated with academics and therefore many exercises are built around them. Speaking is a necessary part of communicating with others in the classroom, and so that too, becomes an obvious teaching choice. Both writing and speaking are ways of assessing progress, because they result in particular ‘products’. But what about listening, without which meaning could not be communicated? How much teaching time should we be spending on explicitly developing listening skills? How are good listening skills linked to independent learning? Justify your answer.

After reading the above paragraph, I reflected on my teaching experiences which include teaching English language arts (L1) in elementary schools. Most, if not all activities had some listening component to them. Some activities involved students listening to instructions, repeating the steps in their own words, and then proceeding with the activity. Other activities relied on listening in order to learn a strategy. For example, when teaching students to make connections (text to person), they listened to a story and then told how something in the book reminded them of something that happened in their lives. The same was done when teaching text to text and text to world connections. The initial lessons to teach these strategies were listening centered activities. Eventually students apply the strategies to reading comprehension. Writing skills were also taught through listening and speaking related activities. After reviewing a week of lessons that I taught, it was easy to determine that listening was extremely important in all language arts classes.

I think teaching listening strategies to students learning English as a second language is as important as learning to apply the strategies in their first language. Students may or may not have learned listening strategies in their first language and if they did they may not be using them to learn the L2. For example, students may use the strategy of writing down relevant information from a message or text in their L1, however, may need specific instruction on applying that to their L2. Therefore, I think it is important to spend class time explicitly teaching these skills.

Another benefit of teaching listening strategies is that they will eventually be used to advance skills in other language modalities. For example, practicing the strategy of listening for transition points such as ‘on the other hand’ or ‘in conclusion’ will enhance students’ speaking, reading, and writing skills.

Students will become more independent learners as they increase the number and variety of listening strategies that they can use in their daily lives. For example, learning how to ask for clarification and listen for salient points will increase confidence, risk-taking and learning.

It is difficult to determine how much class time should be spent explicitly teaching listening activities since I have never taught English as a second language. However, based on my teaching experiences with English as a first language and the fact that it is one of four language modalities, I would assume approximately one quarter of the time should be allotted to teaching listening skills in an ESL classroom.