Scanning Strategies with Sheep

When asked to scan texts, students often apply one strategy they know. Some are good at it, others not. When we have a mixed class it can be useful to discuss different approaches, so that the less successfully scanning students can learn from the more successful ones.

In this activity, we work with pictures of numbered “sheep” (or clouds or any other objects you like). Students are given two minutes to find as many sheep as possible – starting with the number 1 and going on in a numerical order. If, for example, they have all numbers from 1 to 15, their result is 15. However, if they have all numbers from 1 to 15 with the exception of the number 6, their final result is 5.

After those two minutes, we ask those who found the highest numbers to explain how they proceeded – in other words, to share their strategies. We should try and elicit as many different individual strategies as possible, since learning about a variety of approaches is the aim of the task.

We can also use a second task. This time, students are distributed a text and given two minutes to scan it a find some specific information. Then, we can discuss if they tried and used new ways of scanning they learnt from their peers. We can also compare and contrast scanning of objects and scanning of texts.

Sometimes, students insist, they would like to know the places of all numbers, so they can either be told to find them in their free time (and most do), or we can send them to this video:

Languages and Codes

This activity was developed for a group of students who had big problems with understanding texts, but it has also been used for translating skills, originality, elaboration, critical thinking or team work since, so now, it is difficult to say, what exactly it focuses on. Let´s say it is “multi-focal” and we can choose.

The basic idea behind is the idea that may be clear to us, language teachers, but may be hidden to some language learners: the idea that language is actually a system of codes that are constantly being encoded and decoded, and learning a language can basically be a “breaking-the-code” experience.

Activity:

1) In this activity, students are first shown the picture below and asked what they think it could be.

They usually come up with all types of responses but in all groups so far, there has always been someone who relatively soon suggests it could be a story. When we know it is a story, students are asked what they think the story could be about. We usually get bits of the story – whether they are close to the original or not is irrelevant, since this is just an introduction to the whole activity.

2) Students watch the original (a section from Rives´ “A Story ofMixed Emoticons” TED talk) and see if they were close to the original at least in some parts.

3) Students work in groups. They are asked to:

3.1. create their own original story;

and

3.2. write it down in their own invented “coding system”.

- The criteria for codes can vary. Normally, there is no need to limit students, but if they ask what they can or cannot use, we usually tell them they can use letters of all alphabets, digits, pictograms, icons, emoticons, sings, pictures, lines, simply anything; the only rule should be, if letters, digits or other well-known things are used, they should not form know words or should not be used in the way they usually are in an everyday life. Unless we test originality, students do not have to respect these limits, usually they are creative enough to invent something that is not directly clear to the reader, which is the point.

- We have tried this activity with groups of all levels. It works with both beginners and advanced. Only the complexity of ideas in the original stories differs.

4) Groups exchange their stories and try and decode them.

5) The same groups are given a complex text difficult to understand.

6) The difference between the work with text and “coded story” is compared.

This activity can be used for different purposes and that is why it can be stopped after any step.

We can use only point one to stimulate discussion;

we can move to the point two for the purposes of comparison or language use;

we can focus on the point three to activate students´ original thinking;

we can enjoy the point four to illustrate principles of encoding and decoding;

or we can go through all points to show students what barriers may prevent them from being effective language users.

Actually, points 4-6 were the original focus of this activity.

Every time we do it, the procedure is more or less the same: Students have great fun when decoding texts invented by other students – they usually laugh, are full of energy and come up with a positive response, I mean, they usually say something like “...we are not sure but, we believe that it is about this or that”. They present their version and are not afraid of being wrong.

However, when a complex (especially academic) text is given to the group, the energy drops down, the work is silent, involves no laughing and very often, students come up with a negative response, I mean, they say something like “...sorry, we do not know what it is all about, it is too difficult...”. In other words, they are afraid to be wrong and do not want to present their version.

This comparison is essential – when this difference in approach occurs (which is, unfortunately, in too many cases, in my opinion), it is a great start for two types of questions:

1) Why did you enjoy decoding a system you saw for the first time in your life (invented by your colleagues now); did you look for positive solutions; and were you not afraid to be wrong?

and

2) And why did you not apply the same strategy to a system you know much better (any learner at any level of language is always better in that language than in that invented coded system of other students); why is it not fun? Why are you afraid to be wrong?

This discussion usually opens an area of all types of barriers to not only creativity but also language use. The reward is, when students get the point, a change of the whole atmosphere in the class and of even whole students´ attitude to language learning in some cases.

A single story

Creative learning should include a certain level of awareness of barriers that prevent us from being creative learners. This awareness of barriers may help us look at things from different perspectives, overcome obstacles or simply learn more effectively. A “single story” activity should make learners realise that the world is complex and that “a single story” perspective can be ineffective, misleading or sometimes even dangerous (for our lives, for lives of the others, or for our studies and research, for example).

In the context of a second language development, it can help students get a better idea of the fact that each language differs considerably from other languages. It can also help teachers handle difficult questions and comments such as “Why is this irregular?” or “The use of xy is illogical.”

The activity is relatively simple at the beginning but can get slightly more complicated later on, when students need to use their critical thinking skills. 

Students are instructed to watch a part of Chimamanda Adichie´s TED talk: The danger of a single story. 

The first five minutes are usually enough to get the point, but they can watch the whole talk  outside of class (it can also be a home activity from the previous session).

Then, the idea of a single story is discussed with the aim to make sure everybody understands. Then, depending on the group, this discussion can be either a final activity or it can be followed by another step.

Students can be asked to think about their own experience with a single story. It can be focused on language, their private lives or, and this is where it can get really difficult for some students, we can focus on their disciplines. The students should look critically at their own disciplines, professional fields or academic fields of interest and try and identify some areas that could pose a risk of  “the danger of a single story”. 

Here are some examples:

a) private lives:

- “I don't come from Brno. I moved there from Ostrava year and a half ago. My single story about Brno was, that there are many people who have an strange accent called "hantec". Next I thought there will be wine shops on every corner because around Brno are many vineyards. I thought that park around Spilberk Castle will be full of young dating couples because my grannie told me that. My grannie and my dad studied there in Brno and they love this city. … Since I moved to Brno I found out there are just very few people actually speaking "hantec". I counted more pubs than wine shops. I have never met more than two dating couples around Spilberk. ….It means I am pretty satisfied even if my single story was partly wrong.”

- “I'm a little bit embarrassed about my first thaughts about the Czech Republic. I'm from Luxembourg and we see the Czech Republic as an Eastern European country. So I was thinking that it is a poor and a little bit fogy.. but when I'm here now those thaughts were misguided. It is a developed country with everything! It is very clean, has nice buildings and everything looks so nice! I'm now very happy about Brno and the Czech Republic!”

b) academic lives:

- “I have lived in a small town so I have never met a professor or a PhD before coming to the university. I watched them only in a TV or red about them in a book or newspapers. According to these information I considered them a very arrogant, big-headed, superscilious and proud superheros which don’t ever want to talk to me. Because of it I was really frightened and nervous about the first class at the university. I couldn’t sleep and my hands was shaking when I came to the Faculty of social studies. :-) Fortunately I found out very soon professors and PhDs are only human beings and also they are open-minded and friendly, quite most of them. :-)”

- “I think the most common single story within sociology (discipline that I studied on the bachelor degree) is that all our lives, behaviour and characteristic is influenced and made by the society. I think sociology rejects a psychological dimension of human being and especially a biological dimension (but this is the classic conflict between natural science and humanities :-)). Because of this I decided not to continue Sociology because I have a problem with the one-sided view.”

We can also connect this activity to some other skills:

1) The listening part could be used for effective presentations. This talk is a great example of three areas:

1.1. nervousness – Chimamanda seems to be nervous at the beginning of her talk but we do not care about it because what she is saying is simply more important and interesting than signs of her nervousness.

1.2.  audio-visual aids – her speech itself can get full attention of the audience. This shows we should use audio-visual aids when they can help increase the impact of our words but they are not always necessary.

1.3. structure / coherence – the talk has an excellent overall structure and coherence.

2) Writing: After students write their first versions of single stories, they can be asked to change the style and rewrite the ideas in a more formal or academic style (either their own or somebody else’s single story). 

Here is an example of a style transformation:

- "According to auto-ethnographic research conducted by student XY (student XY, 2014) on stereotypes about Czech Republic in context of migration from Luxembourg, it is possible to summarize that the initially strongly stereotypical image usually changes during the visit of this country. More specifically, perception of this country as an underdeveloped polluted post-comunist country has changed (because of immediate personal experience) into the image of country with high standard of living and developed service sector. This change causes feelings of happiness felt by Luxembourg migrants."

 

A "Find a song" activity for scriptophobic students

Writing is a specific skill that is absolutely essential for academic communication. Some students enjoy writing and find it useful. Others dislike or directly hate it, are afraid of it, or see no point in writing. Negative feelings surrounding writing have various reasons and that is why it may be difficult for teachers to eliminate initial reservations of students.

Here is an activity that can help students not necessarily love but ideally see and accept writing as a natural part of their studies and work. This activity offers a different perspective. It invites students to the world of writing, especially if their writing culture is different to that of English. Students can learn about different structures and organisations of academic English texts, they can get to know some useful vocabulary or concepts and, if we are lucky, they do not even notice how much they have learnt.   

The activity is called “Find a Song”. Students are instructed to go to the Internet and look for songs that are related to the topic of academic writing (or specific area we want them to focus on). They should choose one or two songs and share them with the others (students can post links to a discussion forum or to any other space the group shares).

Here are some examples of what songs they can find:

                                                                              (Adapted from: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MNsH0RW7lvM)

The Internet offers some great songs and an enormous number of terrible, weird and embarrassing songs. Both types are equally useful for our purposes because students can see the world of writing from a new perspective and may find a more funny and enjoyable side of it.

The “Find a song” activity can also have a relatively minimal effect on our face-to-face teaching time. The activity can finish in class with just a follow-up discussion or it can continue and students can be asked to work with results of their search more (in or outside of class).

We can ask them to vote for the best song, for the craziest song, for the best lyrics; or for whatever else. The reason for this voting task can serve just to make sure students watch most of the songs and spend more time being exposed to the topic of writing in this way, which is why the subject of voting does not have to be focused on writing at all.

We can also ask students to focus on writing and vote, for example, for the most useful song; for a song that brings most relevant information; or for a song that explains the topic most clearly; this usually depends on what collection of songs we get.

Fluency from a creativity point of view

Fluency can be looked at from various points of view. Language teachers may see fluency as a quality of language, in other words, if we speak very well and are clearly understood, we are fluent. Psychologists (J.P. Guilford and E.P. Torrance, for example), on the other hand, see fluency as our ability to produce a great number of ideas or problem solutions in a given period of time.
When we combine these two approaches, we get interesting activities that can help both, a second language and creative skills development. Here are some ideas with comments:

 


Word fluency
TASK TYPE: In two minutes, write as many words that start with L and end with D as possible.
L……………………D

Expressional fluency
TASK TYPE:  Write as many different sentences where given words start with the letters “I,S,A,W,R” as possible.            I…… S……… A……… W………… R……… .

Associational fluency
TASK TYPE: Write as many synonyms/antonyms to a word as possible.

Ideational fluency
TASK TYPE:  Name all things that fly.  

Steps:
1) First, students are asked to write as many words or sentences as possible.
2) Second, the teacher asks about the highest number and examples are read aloud.
3) Third, a follow-up discussion based on what students have produced (the topic depends on the aim of this activity, such as, vocabulary building; focus on specific register; classification background; creative barriers identification; …).
In this context, it is important to note that a choice of the letters (if the first letter or first/last letter systems are used) is essential and can influence a success of the activity to a great extent.

Advantages:
1) Students generate vocabulary or sentence structures they already know – this can help the teacher to see a realistic size/range of their vocabulary or range of sentence structures they can produce.
2) Students share vocabulary or sentence structures and enrich one another without teacher´s involvement.
3) Students usually enjoy this activity and find it a little bit competitive. (It can, of course, be done individually, in pairs or groups.)
4) The activity is repeatable and easily adaptable.
5) The activity is short and usable at any moment during sessions when we need to generate some words or sentences for later activities.
Example 1:  Before we introduce an academic style or register topic, we can ask students to write down as many words they would never use in academic writing as possible (or as many words they would use in every single academic text they write as possible.). Then, we discuss their results, dividing particular expressions into groups or types. In this way, students can find some principles on their own without being told.
Example 2: Before we introduce the topic of classification, we can ask students to write as many things that fly as possible. Then, students are divided into groups, where they should create some criteria and classify the “flying things” according to those criteria. Then, the whole idea of classification can be easier to grasp.
6)  The activity can relatively clearly show what barriers to creativity students have.
Example: When we use the “Write as many different sentences where given words start with the letters “I,S,A,W,R” as possible .I…….. S……… A……… W………… R……… .” task, most students produce three to five sentences. There are some who do not come up with any and others who come up with as many as twenty-two. (The winner usually uses the strategy of changing only one word in the sentence, e.g. I saw a wild rat, rabbit, Ralph, Richard… .) In the follow-up discussion, we often hear reasons for not producing more sentences like this: “ …it is not academic“; “ ….it is just a game“ ; “ …it is not creative, I wanted to have every sentence completely different“ ;  “ …I was not sure about spelling of some words“ ; “ …it is not good to use informal words in academic English“ ; “ …my grammar is very bad“ ; …  .  We, as teachers, can also ask additional questions, such as  “Why is it all in English, it was not in the instruction, was it?, to make the point that it was not the instruction that made the task complicated but their own inner barriers they built for themselves in their heads which prevented them from getting better results. It is good, to make this activity with this point at the beginning of a course, because later, when we deal with more complex tasks, we can always remind students of this – asking them whether they believe a particular task is difficult to solve objectively or if it is difficult because they make it difficult in their own head.

Disadvantages:
1) Teachers have to be flexible and ready to be surprised and challenged.
2) Some students, especially in postdoctoral programmes tend to find this activity too “non-academic” and sometimes refuse to do it as they see no point. So, it is important to carefully choose times and types (e.g. when we deal with reporting words in academic texts, a task “Write as many synonyms to the word say you use in your texts” is generally accepted as it fits perfectly into the context of the topic.) 

Judgement of our peers

Some students may feel nervous, stressed or uneasy when they are asked to join discussions, present their opinions or simply speak in front of other students. Their unwillingness to speak may be related to no particular language competence. It can be caused by a simple fact that some people fear judgement of their peers. In other words, they think too much about what reactions of the others to their ideas or way of speaking might be, they can be afraid to be laughed at or to be misunderstood. 

In order to create a safe environment that could eliminate or at least decrease stress, we can use a two-step activity that takes about 5-10 minutes. It can be applied either at the beginning of a course or anytime when we feel it could help some students or the whole class in their learning.

Step 1:

The teacher draws three simple objects, such as a triangle, circle and flower, on the board and gives students one minute to draw those three objects on a sheet of paper. 

 After one minute, the activity is stopped. (Students usually need less time to copy those objects.) Then, the teacher invites the class to discuss how difficult or easy the task was. It is necessary to ask “why” they feel it was easy or difficult. (Students usually find this task easy and give reasons such as “we can see it”; “clear shapes”; “we are capable of doing it”; “two-dimensional objects”… .  Some suggest it was difficult but the reasons they give show they often mean it either as a joke, or they try and challenge the teacher since it is clear what answer is expected. It is good to remember the reasons for either opinion.)      

Step 2:

The teacher gives students another minute and asks them to draw a person sitting next to them. (Some may ask “person on which side?” – this is irrelevant, they can draw anybody, including the teacher).

After one minute, the activity is stopped. Students are asked to show their results to their “objects” and a discussion on whether the task was easy or difficult and why follows. (This time, students usually find the task difficult. The reasons are diverse, it is often good to challenge them with the fact that the situation is very similar to the task before …”they could see the object”; “they know the shapes”; …which can sometimes provoke a better discussion. They hardly ever mention that one of the biggest differences between those two situations is the fact that they are asked to show the result to the others, or to one peer at least). It is good to let them discuss all possible differences and then show the following video segment:  

 

(In my experience, the situation has almost always been identical to that in the video, which was the source of inspiration for this activity, of course.  To see the full TED Talk by Tim Brawn from the IDEO Company, go to: On creativity and play ).

Showing the video before teacher’s final comments helps students see their reactions were “normal”. Students can also get the idea, since the explanation by Tim Brown is clear, entertaining and based on research (which can add credibility to the whole point the teacher is going to make).

After the video, the teacher can explain that the same reactions occur in the use of language. It may be suggested that it is important to eliminate or decrease this “fear of judgement of our peers” and that whenever students feel stressed because of this fear, they could think of this “drawing activity”  and remember they had some fun.

Advantages:

Later, during the course, when a situation related to the “fear of judgement of our peers” occurs, the teacher can remind students of their own experience of this activity, which usually makes them more relaxed.