Archive for category: ENLIVEN Magazine

By Willy Prasetya, S.Pd., M.A.

Authentic materials are essential in communicative English language teaching because they allow students to learn the use of language in real communication as well as the sociocultural contexts in which such communication occurs. We can find authentic texts everywhere: movies, songs, newspapers, books, signs, food label, and various resources on the Internet.

However, many English teachers in Indonesia, both pre-service and in-service teachers, still have difficulties in finding and selecting authentic texts that fit their students and teaching contexts. There are at least two reasons for this problem. First, finding suitable authentic texts requires a lot of time and effort. It is not a one-stop process; most of the times a desired text is found after spending hours reading books and articles or watching videos. For that reason, many teachers prefer using English textbooks or workbooks to save them some hassle. Second, most “easily-found” authentic texts, such as news, online encyclopedia entries, and TV shows, are beyond the average proficiency of Indonesian students. Such texts are written or spoken with a wide range of vocabulary and usually longer than texts designed particularly for language teaching. If an authentic text is used for teaching as it is, a teacher will spend much time explaining the meaning of the text instead of getting down directly to the teaching.

One thing to rule them all

Here, I will focus on navigating the Internet for authentic texts because it is relatively easier and faster than finding some from books, magazines, or news broadcast. Many resources are available on the Internet, and there is one thing to rule them all: KEYWORDS.

Irrelevant keywords are the most common problem in searching suitable authentic texts. For example, keywords such as ‘descriptive text’ or ‘descriptive text example’ only result in descriptive texts taken from English textbooks, outdated English examination sheets, or texts written by other teachers for their teaching purpose. By using keywords that represent what descriptive texts tell about, such as ‘what is your favorite thing and why’ or ‘your favorite holiday destination’, you can find authentic descriptive texts with various lengths and complexity from interactive websites such as Reddit, Quora, Tripadvisor, etc. With countless authentic texts at hand, all you need to do is just quick scanning for the texts that will serve your purpose.

An example of an authentic text from Quora (https://www.quora.com/What’s-your-favorite-thing-you-own-and-why)

You should use keywords that tell what the texts are about instead of the name of the text type. You should also be able to come up with many different but related keywords. Some example of good keywords are  ‘who is your favorite anime character’ for descriptive texts, ‘what is the saddest moment in your life’ for recount texts, ‘wattpad teen fiction stories’ for narratives, and ‘letter to my parents/teachers’ for personal letters. You can modify the keywords or try to use some others to get different search results.

How about dialogues or speeches?

For authentic spoken texts, YouTube is probably the most convenient source. Once you have found the video that fits your classroom, you can download the transcript if one is available. Just click the three dots under the video, click ‘Open transcript’, and the transcript will pop up on the right side of the window. You can copy the transcript and make some adjustment whenever necessary before using it as your teaching materials.

How to open YouTube video subtitle 

How about finding authentic examples for particular expressions?

Another way of finding authentic examples of language use is using corpora. A corpus is a collection of language use in real world. It works best for finding the authentic examples of expressions, such as asking and giving opinion, greetings, offering help, and expressing agreement and disagreement, because its database is accessible using chunks of language as the keywords.

I will use COCA (Corpus of Contemporary American English, https://www.english-corpora.org/coca/) to demonstrate how it works. Once you get to the home page of the corpus, you are required to enter a chunk of language. Let’s try ‘in my opinion’ to find authentic examples for the expression of giving opinion.

COCA (Corpus of Contemporary American English) home page

After clicking ‘Find matching strings’, the corpus will show the frequency or the number of available examples on its database. Just click ‘CONTEXT’ to access these examples.

Number of examples available for ‘in my opinion’ on COCA

There you go! Just click the link provided on each example to access the full text.

The search results for ‘in my opinion’

Besides COCA, you can also try other corpora, including British National Corpus (BNC, http://bncweb.lancs.ac.uk/bncwebSignup/user/login.php), Michigan Corpus of Academic Spoken English (MICASE, https://quod.lib.umich.edu/cgi/c/corpus/corpus?c=micase;page=simple), and VOA’s Special English Program Scripts (http://www.manythings.org/voa/sentences.htm). You can also search other available English corpora using Google. Corpora collect language use from various sources, including online news, official websites, personal websites, and Internet forums, so chances are the examples that you find is authentic. Still, it is always recommended to be meticulous in choosing the right authentic texts for your students.

With the Internet, you can always choose any authentic texts that are suitable to your students. However, in case you need to use a text with the difficulty level above your students’ proficiency, you should make some adjustment to the text. The next article is going to talk about adapting authentic texts for teaching.

By Astri Hapsari, S.S., M.TESOL

During COVID 19 pandemic, learning is moved from face to face interactions in the classrooms to distance online learning in various online learning platforms. Whether it is in classroom interactions to blended learning or full online learning, active learning still becomes the ideal approach of teaching or giving instructions.

Active learning is often defined as any approach to giving instruction or teaching in which all students actively engaged in the learning process.  Active learning may take many forms. In active learning, students are expected to fully participate in their learning process, in contrast to more traditional instruction in which students passively accept knowledge from the lecturers.

If we google active learning, we usually find activities that involve students to practice their thinking skills, such as: explain concepts in their own words through discussions, argue with complex questions, solve problems, and reflect from their experiences. As learners, we are familiar with the manifestation of the notion of active learning in our learning process, but do we really understand the cognitive process needed for an active learning turns to be the real memorable learning experience and in-depth knowledge in our mind?

Memory and Learning

In order to understand the cognitive process in active learning, we should understand the way memories are stored . Atkinson and Shiffrin (1968) proposed a multi store model of memory. When a  new information or knowledge is received in our sensory memory from the environment, it comes as short term memory which lasts only 5 to 30 seconds. Short term memory is the gateway into long term memory, but it does not store memory and is very limited in capacity. For active learning to happen, there must be intention and activities that involve thinking to learn which can cause active processing of new information and knowledge between short term and long term memory. Linking new knowledge and information to prior knowledge can help working memory to store them to long term memory. Hands on exercises or activities need to include some form of meaningful cognitive processing in order to be stored in long term memory. Active learning happens if the students engage in meaningful activities in order to proceed new knowledge, concept, and skills to long term memory.

In addition to understanding how new information and knowledge proceed in short term and long term memory, students need to understand how attention works in order to perform an active learning. Selective attention happens when we consciously focus on something but it does not ensure long term memory formation. The reason why the students can pay attention and listen carefully but not much be learned is because what comes into short term memory is not processed with long term memory. For an active learning to happen, a learner should link and proceed through a dialogue between working memory and long term memory after attending new knowledge or information from sensory memory or short term memory. This effort is called elaborative encoding. Connecting new information and knowledge to prior knowledge can help learners stick in long term memory.

Implications for Teaching

By understanding the multi store model of memory, we can have deeper knowledge on how active learning should involve active cognitive processing. Some implications for teaching :

1. Inside Out Teaching

When a teacher designs a lesson by thinking first what’s in the learner’s head and emotion.

By relating the lesson to what the students already know, it is easier for them to store the new knowledge and information to their long term memory.

2. Activating prior knowledge

To make students familiar with the context of the new knowledge or information also helps them in retrieving concepts and skills from long term memory to prepare for a new lesson. It also helps the teacher to see the gaps in understanding before teaching. Free recall is often better than cued recall for durable learning because the efforts in free recall helps students in consolidating memories and providing learner-generated retrieval cues.

3. Making memory is effortful and requires thinking

As John Dewey puts it eloquently it is not experiences we learn from but reflection upon our experiences. As teachers, we should put our best effort to help students retain new knowledge, conceptx, and skills to their long term memory by creating a meaningful and supportive learning environment that helps their cognitive processing.

After revisiting the notion of active learning through a cognitive science lens, it is worth reflecting on our own teaching practice, have we provided enough opportunity for our students to store and retrieve new knowledge, values, and skills in our design.

References

Atkinson, R.C. & Shiffrin, R.M. (1968). Chapter: Human memory : A proposed system and its control processes. In Spence, K.W., & Spence, J. T. The psychology of learning and motivation (Volume 2). New York: Academic Press, pp 89-195.

Chamary, J.V. (2015). How Inside Out Explains The Science of Memory. In Forbes.https://www.forbes.com/sites/jvchamary/2015/08/30/inside-out-science/#6f9d86a05184

Columbia University and Teachers College via EdX. (2019). The Science of Learning – What Every Teacher Should Know. https://www.classcentral.com/course/edx-the-science-of-learning-what-every-teacher-should-know-5725?utm_source=fcc_medium&utm_medium=web&utm_campaign=ivy_league_courses_2020

Mcleod, S. (2017). Multi Store Model of Memory. In Simply Psychology. https://www.simplypsychology.org/multi-store.html

By  Irma Windy Astuti, S.S., M.Hum.

In time of Covid-19 crisis, it feels like the world has been drastically twisted and turned. Even though the world has not been completely turned-off, a lot of things suddenly require immense changes and adjustment to ensure our safety. The Work from Home and Social Distancing policies have affected the usual businesses we do. The offices, schools and universities are just some of the areas affected by the pandemic. For us in the education arenas, the circumstance has given teachers and lecturers very few options but to fully embrace online/ distance learning. As a result of it, educators quickly brace themselves in taking up and getting themselves acquainted with the challenges of online learning. Most of us (teachers) have endured this one month of self-quarantine juggling to meet the need of the students and to best comply to the courses’ learning objectives. A lot of discussions about online learning techniques and its tips & tricks have also been shared and implemented by many educators, including how to adjust the learning materials and ease the teaching delivery in order not to overwhelm the students.

From time to time though, the discussions on online learning have not only been about the course content, subject matter, methods and/ or their technicalities. Teachers and parents are also starting to get concerned about the well-being of their students and children (both for physical and psychological reasons). While the internet and the online technologies have done wonders in facilitating our distant work and learning, several side problems have also begun to emerge. Ever since the majority of the world went fully online for working and studying, most of us have had a significant increase of screen time. Screen time is the amount of time we spend staring at various screens (of our laptops, mobile phones and televisions) for various work/ study-related and entertainment purposes. Our laptops and cell phone have indeed become major parts of our lives and their screens are our windows to the many worlds. However, our heavy physical reliance on them is not without some lurking health risks. Too much screen time is obviously not good for our overall health, especially for our eyesight.

Even long before the covid outbreak and the burst of online learning, a lot of people (parents, especially with young children, health professionals and educators) have already taken the excessive use of screen time seriously, including none other than, the World Health Organization (WHO). As a result, many parties have been encouraged to speak up and conduct researches on it. The idea is, of course, not to substantially diminish or simply lessen the screen consumption, but it is more on how one can take a more thoughtful measure and healthier approach with respects to it.

While studies from the medical, psychological and other fields might focus on different aspect of human well-being with regards to our screen consumption, the messages being put-out are clear: we need to have a good balance of it. Take a systematic review study conducted by Stiglic (2019) as an example, which has identified various health problems and the decline in quality of people’s lives associated with excessive exposure of screen time. Whilst the ophthalmologists and scientists, as reported by American Academy of Ophthamology in 2018, have not come to a solid conclusion on whether considerable amount of screen time might become the sole cause of nearsightedness (myopia), they are mostly certain that “most computer users experience digital eyestrain”.

Now that we are forced to spend more time staring at our screens to deal with many of our obligations, we need to constantly remind ourselves of the recommended or “ideal” handle of screen time to ensure and sustain our health, especially our vision health. Many ophthalmologists have warned us about the hazard of the blue light coming from our gadgets’ screen, hence we need to take more active precaution and conscious measures both on the individual level and collectively.  For each one of us, be it student or teacher, Goodwin (2017) recommends that we can ease our eye fatigue by following the 20-20-20-20 rule. This rule can be detailed as having a frequent break from the screen after 20 minutes, resting our eyes from the screen’s glare for 20 seconds by blinking our eyes 20 times and doing any movement (during which) to remain physically active, in addition to looking away while focusing on any object in the distance as far as 20 feet or about 6 metres from us. The endorsement of such rule has truly come helpful and handy in giving people a concrete reference to what ones need to be exactly doing when wanting to reduce the detrimental effects of their excessive screen consumption. Unfortunately, many people also do not always realize that their mindless screen hustling and trivial craving for online entertainment may also be as harmful. Instead of accessing online entertainment during our downtime, we can actually seek recreation and spend our pastime offline, away from the screen.

As with the educators, having mostly an absolute handle of their classes mean that they can also readily play parts in helping to lessen the unnecessary screen consumption of their students. Seddon, a deputy head of a senior international school in Hongkong, has recommended a valuable guideline concerning the matter. During this highly demanding time of “forced” online learning, according to Seddon (2020), teachers can take more mild approaches in organizing their lesson delivery without having to jeopardize their students’ learning engagement. For once, teachers need to keep themselves reminded that an hour of online study cannot be plainly equalized to one hour of offline learning since each mode would require and demand a different way of work and study approach. To keep things simple is also recommended, such as not introducing students to multiple new systems for learning, but simply sticking to the websites and platforms that they are already familiar with. This would save the extra screen time that the students need to spend on learning something that is technically new. The use of any video to aid learning is also necessary to be kept under 6 minutes to facilitate the normal range of most people concentration span. All in all, Seddon’s advice is to caution teachers and educators not to get into the trapping of work or a teaching-learning scheme on its technical and task completion level, but to ensure the delivery of the curriculum objectives instead, which can be achieved by being more aware of the new learning context and mode.

There is no doubt that today’s technological wonders and our communication gadgets have aided and enabled us to resume our teaching-learning and other works from home.  Nevertheless, their benefit and detriment to our health and safety are (also) two sides of the same coin. The choice to wisely toss and flip the coin is all up to us. During this time of crisis, let us help create and make a wiser use of our screen time by taking a more informed and purposeful approach whilst making sure the fair achievement of our learning goals and productivity.

References

American Academy of Ophthalmology. (2018). Is too much screen time harming children’s vision? The American Academy of Ophthalmology helps parents separate the facts from fiction. https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2018/08/180806162718.htm

Manocha, Ramesh. (Ed.). (2017). Mental wellbeing in the digital age: Nurturing young minds. Hachette UK.

Seddon, Matt. (2020). 5 Tips to help reduce student screen time. https://www.tes.com/news/5-tips-help-reduce-student-screen-time

Stiglic, Neza., & Viner, R. M. (2019). Effects of screen time on the health and well-being of children and adolescents: a systematic review of reviews. BMJ Open; 9: e023191.