IT WORKS

IN PRACTICE
More tested lessons, suggestions, tips and techniques which have all worked
for ETp readers. Try them out for yourself – and then send us your own
contribution. All the contributors to this issue will receive a digital subscription
to Modern English Teacher.

STUDENT-AUTHORED TESTS ■■  rovide a challenge for your classmates (don’t make the
P
questions too easy).
Stephanie Hirschman, Lewes, UK ■■  reate a separate answer key with the correct answers
C
In common with most teachers, the Covid-19 pandemic has
and say which famous person the sentence is about.
meant that I have been doing lots of training and scrambling
to move my teaching online. The take-home message for
■■ We will then try all the exercises.
me has been that good teaching online is actually just good As I was monitoring and supporting, I observed that some of the
teaching, harnessing the technology to make sure that students recognised that the different question types can relate
interactivity is preserved as much as possible. to specific areas of mastery. For example, gap-fills test form and
I tried the activity described here with my class before the meaning; multiple-choice questions work well for collocations;
lockdown, and was pleased with the results. Happily, it will anagrams support spelling; and word re-ordering tests the
also work really well online, where it will inject some lively syntax of multi-word expressions. Obviously, error correction
pair- or groupwork into what might otherwise be a very dry tests common mistakes. If any students hadn’t made these
testing interlude. connections, I was able to nudge them in the right direction.

Here’s the context: my class were advanced and highly In the physical classroom, I quickly proofread the exercises,
motivated. We were using a coursebook with a very heavy and then we put them up on the walls. The students walked
focus on lexis, including lots of lexical chunks. I was around doing the different exercises – we had six groups, so each
underwhelmed by the progress tests which came with the student did at least 30 exercises. They could collaborate if they
coursebook – they were too easy, too dull and lacking in the wanted to, and then check their answers after each mini-test.
richness needed to contextualise natural expressions. Yet Online, the students could work collaboratively in a breakout room
the students wanted to be tested to measure their progress, (or similar) to write their tests and then submit them to the teacher
and my institution requires regular testing. I could have for checking. The tests could then be posted on Padlet, or on a
written my own test, but then it occurred to me that this was shared Word document, or even rewritten by the teacher in a VLE
something the students could do for each other; they would quiz function and made available to all the students to try out.
write a better test than I would, because they would know User comments could be added, eg This was a tough question!
what had been tricky for them to master, and they would be or I think there might be another correct answer.
learning twice – once when they wrote the questions, and Student feedback was positive, and some interesting
again when they answered them. variations were suggested. Some students thought it would be
I started with a model – five different exercise types using helpful if specific lexical items had been assigned to each pair,
the target language (related to describing people and first as, inevitably, some items were repeated across the tests. Others
impressions): error correction, multiple choice, gap-fill, put thought this repetition was helpful – presumably, the students
the letters in order (anagram) to make a word within a chose the most difficult items to test each other on. I made a
sentence, and put the words in order (to make a sentence). note to myself that we could also include a pronunciation
The students first completed examples of these exercises exercise, eg number of syllables and stress – I used this as an
and identified the exercise types. Then, working in pairs, they extension activity for early finishers. I also wondered if grouping
followed these instructions: students with the same L1, to write questions for other students
with the same L1, might be interesting, but obviously this
Now write more exercises to test your classmates:
wouldn’t always be possible. The students said they enjoyed the
■■  sing the topic of famous people, write one of each
U testing phase more than creating the tests – they wanted to be
exercise type – as a minimum. able to see their mistakes. In any event, the students wanted to
■■  est the language from pages 16 and 17 of the
T try this again and, with more experience under their belts, I think
coursebook. they will do an even better job next time. n

32 Issue 129 • July 2020 www.etprofessional.com

 IT WORKS IN PRACTICE

BOARD GAMES
Shiromi Upulaneththa, Kandy, Sri Lanka
The language learning classroom should be full of fun,
irrespective of age or gender. The activity described here is
one that I used at the end of a session with my pre-service
trainee teachers.
First, I put the trainees into six groups with four members
in each. I gave each group a simple board game – the sort
where you throw dice and move counters around a board
according to the number thrown – and let them play for about
15 minutes.
Afterwards, I asked each group to select a particular area
of grammar (eg past tenses, passive voice, reported speech,
etc), and I told them that we were going to create some board PECHA KUCHA
games for secondary school classes. I also asked each group Shiromi Upulaneththa, Kandy, Sri Lanka
to select a particular level of proficiency. This is another activity I have used with my trainee teachers
Next, I asked them to write some questions related to their in a linguistics class. However, I believe it could be adapted
chosen grammar area and suitable for the level they had to make it suitable for use with language learners.
selected. They then had to draw a board game grid and put Pecha kucha is a Japanese expression used to describe a
their questions into the squares. They found the activity type of presentation limited to six minutes and 40 seconds, in
interesting, and many of them indicated that they would try which the presenter has only 20 slides, which are set to
their game out with the students in their next teaching practice change automatically on PowerPoint or some other video
session. They suggested that the board game would be useful presentation software.
as a reflection tool, or as a way of assessing the students at
Before the lesson, I asked the trainees to bring in a few
the end of a lesson.
items of stationery – some light-coloured pieces of A4 paper,
The following week, I asked the trainees to bring their pens, etc. Then, in class, I wrote pecha kucha on the board
notebooks for all the different subjects that they study in the and asked them if the term was familiar to them. It wasn’t, so I
training college. Again, putting them into groups, I asked each asked them to get out their smartphones and search for the
group to select one particular subject that they would like to term online. They found many websites and YouTube clips
work with, eg educational psychology, the principles of which explained and demonstrated the concept. Then I asked
education, educational sociology, literature, etc. Then, I asked them to form groups of five and to make notes on the key
them to create board games for selected areas of those features of this mode of presentation.
subjects. Later, we were able to hand the games over to the
I then told them that we were going to have our own
appropriate class tutors. The tutors found these very useful: if
pecha kucha, but with some differences: ours would be a
they were absent for any reason, the trainees could use the
shorter version, with only ten slides and limited to three
time profitably by playing the games. n
minutes. In addition, all our ‘slides’ would be made manually
with coloured A4 paper, rather then being PowerPoint slides.
I explained the rules:
■■ They could only use ten slides.
■■  ach group would get only three minutes to make their
E
presentation.
■■  very member of the group must talk at some point
E
during the presentation.
I asked each group to choose a particular word class (eg
nouns, verbs, adjectives, adverbs, conjunctions, etc) on
which to base their presentation. Then, I gave them only ten
minutes of preparation time, asking them to refer to their
notes as well as any websites to help them with the content.
I kept the preparation time short, to match the presentation
mode. The students all succeeded in gathering the necessary
information and preparing the slides within the given time.
When they had finished the preparation, I asked them to
make their presentations to the class. Even though it was
challenging for them, once they got into the work, they
really enjoyed it. n

www.etprofessional.com Issue 129 • July 2020 33