By Stephanie Hirschman

October 2, 2023

Flipped learning is very much a buzz word these days, and it’s worth thinking about whether this approach is suitable for your

lessons. It’s quite easy to define: whereas a more traditional model of teaching involves some sort of initial input (for example a

lecture or demonstration) followed by some sort of related output (for example a discussion or experiment) with some homework to follow, in flipped learning, this order is disrupted. Students do their homework before the class meets by watching a recorded lecture or video or reading an article. This enables them to spend the lesson time on activities which make a more significant contribution to their deep understanding and mastery of important ideas, for example, discussion, roleplay or presentations. It sits well within blended learning as the pre-lesson homework is likely to be accessed online, while the class activities are conducted face-to-face.

By Stephanie Hirschman

October 2, 2023

Flipped learning is very much a buzz word these days, and it’s worth thinking about whether this approach is suitable for your

lessons. It’s quite easy to define: whereas a more traditional model of teaching involves some sort of initial input (for example a

lecture or demonstration) followed by some sort of related output (for example a discussion or experiment) with some homework to follow, in flipped learning, this order is disrupted. Students do their homework before the class meets by watching a recorded lecture or video or reading an article. This enables them to spend the lesson time on activities which make a more significant contribution to their deep understanding and mastery of important ideas, for example, discussion, roleplay or presentations. It sits well within blended learning as the pre-lesson homework is likely to be accessed online, while the class activities are conducted face-to-face.

By Stephanie Hirschman

October 2, 2023

Flipped learning is very much a buzz word these days, and it’s worth thinking about whether this approach is suitable for your

lessons. It’s quite easy to define: whereas a more traditional model of teaching involves some sort of initial input (for example a

lecture or demonstration) followed by some sort of related output (for example a discussion or experiment) with some homework to follow, in flipped learning, this order is disrupted. Students do their homework before the class meets by watching a recorded lecture or video or reading an article. This enables them to spend the lesson time on activities which make a more significant contribution to their deep understanding and mastery of important ideas, for example, discussion, roleplay or presentations. It sits well within blended learning as the pre-lesson homework is likely to be accessed online, while the class activities are conducted face-to-face.

Language is a multifaceted tool that serves as a means of communication, expression, and understanding. Within the realm of language acquisition, four primary skills play a central role: speaking, listening, reading, and writing. Each of these skills contributes uniquely to one's language proficiency and plays a vital role in different aspects of life. In this post, we will delve into the relative importance of these four key language skills and how they complement each other.

Speaking is often considered the most critical language skill, as it directly enables human communication. It facilitates interaction with others, both socially and professionally, allowing individuals to express their thoughts, ideas, and emotions effectively. The ability to speak fluently is especially crucial in situations like business negotiations, job interviews, and everyday conversations. Effective speaking enhances one's confidence, builds relationships, and fosters cultural understanding.

Listening is the counterpart to speaking, and it is equally essential in effective communication. Without strong listening skills, misunderstandings can arise, leading to breakdowns in communication. Active listening involves not only hearing words but also comprehending their meaning, tone, and context. Proficient listening enhances language learners' ability to engage in meaningful conversations, understand cultural nuances, and respond appropriately. In educational settings, strong listening skills are crucial for learning and comprehension.

Reading expands one's knowledge and understanding of language. It allows individuals to access a vast wealth of information, literature, and culture. Through reading, individuals can explore diverse perspectives, historical accounts, and contemporary issues. Reading also plays a significant role in academic and professional contexts, where individuals are required to process, analyze, and synthesize written information. Strong reading skills lead to improved vocabulary, comprehension, and critical thinking.

Writing is the skill that allows individuals to express their thoughts and ideas in a structured and organized manner. It serves as a means of documentation, creativity, and self-expression. In academic and professional settings, effective writing is essential for creating reports, essays, emails, and other forms of communication. It also plays a crucial role in preserving knowledge, culture, and history through the written word. Strong writing skills enable individuals to convey their thoughts with clarity and precision.

While each of these four language skills holds significance on its own, their importance is interconnected. They complement and reinforce each other, creating a holistic language proficiency. For instance, strong listening skills aid in developing accurate pronunciation when speaking. Reading enhances vocabulary, which in turn improves writing. Writing practice can lead to a deeper understanding of grammatical structures, benefiting both speaking and listening.

Moreover, in the modern world, technology has blurred the lines between these skills. Communication platforms, such as social media and instant messaging, require a combination of speaking, listening, reading, and writing. Multimedia content, including videos and podcasts, encourages learners to engage in both listening and speaking activities.

In conclusion, the four key language skills - speaking, listening, reading, and writing - each hold a unique and essential place in language acquisition and proficiency. Their relative importance depends on the context, goals, and individual preferences. However, it is the interplay of these skills that results in a well-rounded and effective communicator. Language learners benefit most when they strive for balance and competence in all four skills, enabling them to navigate the complexities of language in diverse personal, educational, and professional settings.

By Stephanie Hirschman

October 2, 2023

Flipped learning is very much a buzz word these days, and it’s worth thinking about whether this approach is suitable for your

lessons. It’s quite easy to define: whereas a more traditional model of teaching involves some sort of initial input (for example a

lecture or demonstration) followed by some sort of related output (for example a discussion or experiment) with some homework to follow, in flipped learning, this order is disrupted. Students do their homework before the class meets by watching a recorded lecture or video or reading an article. This enables them to spend the lesson time on activities which make a more significant contribution to their deep understanding and mastery of important ideas, for example, discussion, roleplay or presentations. It sits well within blended learning as the pre-lesson homework is likely to be accessed online, while the class activities are conducted face-to-face.

Let me start with a true story. When I was seven years old, my family spent a year in France, and I had to go to school there. The only thing was, I didn’t speak French. Luckily my mother was fluent in that language, and she set out to prepare me a few months before we left. Armed only with a second-hand copy of a little picture book called Totor et Tristan, she sat me down on the sofa with her a few times a week for around 10 minutes. Sometimes she read the book to me while I followed the text silently and sometimes I had to read a page myself. She asked me questions in French and I answered in French, or she corrected my pronunciation. That was it.

My first day at school in France was memorable for many reasons, but one of these was that I was the only child in a class of native French speakers to score 100% on our first spelling test! Everyone was amazed, me most of all because I didn’t even know what most of the words meant.

So, what made this possible? I think it was reading with my mother – I guess had read more in French than my classmates and thus was able to recognize the tricky relationship between sound and spelling. My confidence was sky high and I was fluent within four months.

Exploring a written text for fun, on your own terms, is called extensive reading, and teachers can support their students to realize its many benefits.

Graded readers are books which have been adapted to be suitable for specific levels of language learners to enjoy. They can be classics (The Phantom of the Opera), film adaptations (Rain Man) or original works of fiction or non-fiction. They can be purchased online or at bookshops, or you can obtain them from libraries or even find some on websites.

There are many reasons for making them available to students. First, reading is fun. It’s also magic learning. Students who have a sustained habit of extensive reading see improvements in a range of areas: lexical, grammatical and spelling as well as reading speed, which is vital for success in academic and work contexts. Being able to select their own reading material gives students a sense of ownership.

It’s helpful if a teacher initially introduces students to graded readers and explains how to choose and use them. Students should examine both covers carefully, using the picture and the blurb to determine the genre and read a basic description of the story. Additional information can be found inside the book, in the Introduction.

While it’s not necessary to have 100% comprehension of the text, choosing a book which is too difficult or too easy will not lead to an enjoyable experience. Most books are labelled with a level, but no two intermediate readers will have the same needs. Therefore, a simple test can be performed: the student should choose one page at random and read it to see how many unknown words they encounter. If the answer is seven or fewer, this book will be suitable. More than seven, and it’ll be too hard to get a good flow going when reading.

While students are reading, they should try to work out the meaning of unfamiliar items from context. They should also be made aware of the Glossary at the back of some books and, of course, they can use a dictionary if they really need to. However, some items do notreally need further exploration - making decisions about what’s important and what’s not is an important skill for language learners. Some books also have comprehension questions at the back.

However, the main aim is to get into and enjoy the story without lots of interruptions and checks. Encourage students to read ten minutes a day on a regular basis (perhaps in bed or while commuting). Results will not be immediate, but within a few weeks, students should recognize the improvements.

A collection of readers is well worth investing in. Be creative when looking for material – why not try a graphic novel? Even authentic texts not intended for language learners can be worthwhile for advanced students or those with a special interest in or knowledge of a topic.

Read the following text:

Read the following text:

The movement towards a more meaningful approach to the teaching of English as a foreign language in Brazilian regular schools reached its climax in the 20th century with the publication of the Brazilian National Curricular Parameters (PCN) for the teaching of foreign languages at basic education level. Since then, the community of teachers has been divided into those who welcomed the contents, views and propositions of the document, and the ones who believed that the suggestions it contained were inappropriate. At the center of this controversy was the importance given by the official policies to the teaching of reading, as opposed to an approach, borrowed from private language institutes, which historically favored a focus on the oral skills.

A brief overview of the recent history of ELT in Brazilian regular schools

During the 1970s, the so-called audiolingual method, based on behaviorist and structuralist assumptions, was still considered the only scientific way of teaching a foreign language. Its emphasis on the oral skills and on the exhaustive repetition of structural exercises seemed to work well in the contexts of private language institutes. Those contexts were characterized by the gathering of small numbers of highly motivated students per class, a weekly time-table superior in the number of hours to the one adopted in regular schools, and plenty of audiovisual resources. Questionable in itself, both because of its results (which in time were revealed to be less efficient than believed, especially in terms of fluency) and its theoretical assumptions, the method ended up being adopted by regular schools due to its positive reputation at the time. The failure of the methodology in this context would soon become evident, generating extreme frustration both amongst teachers and students.

From the 1980s on, with the spread of ideas connected to the so-called communicative approach and the growth of English for Specific Purposes (ESP), the community of researchers and teachers interested in the context of regular schools started reviewing the assumptions and logic of English Language Teaching (ELT). Recognizing that each and every school discipline needs to justify its presence in the curriculum socially and educationally, this movement identified the skill of reading as the most relevant one for the students attending the majority of Brazilian regular schools.This understanding was achieved by considering not only the possibility of real use outside school, but also the role this approach could play in the achievement of other educational goals, such as the improvement of student's reading abilities in Portuguese as a mother tongue. This movement reached its climax with the publication of the Brazilian National Curricular Parameters (PCN) for the teaching of foreign languages at basic education level by the end of the 1990s. The document recommended the focus on the teaching of reading within a view of language as discourse. However, it did not close the door on the teaching of any other skill, as long as the context made it possible and relevant.

This understanding was achieved by considering not only the possibility of real use outside school, but also the role this approach could play in the achievement of other educational goals, such as the improvement of student's reading abilities in Portuguese as a mother tongue. This movement reached its climax with the publication of the Brazilian National Curricular Parameters (PCN) for the teaching of foreign languages at basic education level by the end of the 1990s. The document recommended the focus on the teaching of reading within a view of language as discourse. However, it did not close the door on the teaching of any other skill, as long as the context made it possible and relevant.

Another important characteristic of the Parameters that should not be overlooked is their emphasis on teacher's autonomy. This emphasis can be seen clearly in the fact that no content or method is imposed upon the teachers. What one can find are suggestions and relevant information for teachers to make their own decisions, taking into consideration the context within which they work. In other words, the Parameters do not force any teacher to limit their focus on the teaching of reading, if they believe they can go further than that.

To be or not to be: professional identities and beliefs

When asked why they were against the focus on reading, most teachers who take this position, told me that they considered the teaching of reading to be "not enough". Most of them also added that if the teaching of reading was designed to fit a context where one cannot effectively teach the oral skills, then we should not adapt ourselves to that context, but rather demand the improvements that would make more feasible the teaching of the so-called four skills.

Let us consider these statements more closely. The first one is about quantity, that is, by teaching "only" the reading skill, the teacher would be denying her/his students the opportunity for learning all the other skills. They would be denied the opportunity for learning to speak English, which is, after all, assumed to be the real goal of teaching English as a Foreign Language (EFL).

Reasonable and democratic as it may seem, such an argument fails to take into consideration at least one extremely relevant issue: the fact that in Brazil there are virtually no reports of successful teaching of the four skills in contexts other than the private language institutes. Before the mid-1980s, several different attempts were made to make ELT work out at regular schools, but only those which completely changed the characteristics of the classes (making them look almost exactly like the small, homogeneous classes of the private institutes) were able to achieve some (questionable) level of success. In other words, the integrative approach to ELT, with its claim of teaching the four skills, focusing especially on the oral skills, has never been successful in our regular schools, including most of the private ones, with very few exceptions. If that is indeed the case, then it makes very little sense to speak of giving our students more or less of something that they never really had. And even if we are to speak in such terms, then it is extremely clear (at least for those who tried it) that the communicative teaching of one skill is definitely better (and more) than the pantomime of allegedly teaching the four skills, which was never successful in the context of Brazilian schools.

Where do we go from here?

Any attempt to establish new policies for the teaching of EFL at Brazilian regular schools should start with the recognition that the PCN were a very important step towards meaningful foreign language education in this context. Without such recognition, there will always be the suspicion that the old beliefs connected to the professional identity of the teacher as an instructor are coming back.

Surely, we do not want to teach only reading forever. But sound attempts to go forward in enhancing the relevance of our teaching should start with the discussion of the three groups of reasons that justified the propositions of the PCN. The focus on reading was considered the most adequate for the majority of our schools because of practical considerations about our working conditions, social relevance, and educational relevance.

As far as practical conditions and educational relevance are concerned, virtually no major change has occurred in order to justify reframing our teaching. However, in what concerns social relevance, it is undeniable that the growth of the Internet has provided a new context for the use of the English language outside schools. For that reason, it is my belief that skills other than reading may now be taught in our classes without representing a return to a rationale that is alien to our schools. The teaching of writing in the context of Internet genres and practices is definitely necessary, if we want our students to have their own voice, becoming able to project their own local identities in global contexts.

Adapted from: ALMEIDA, Ricardo Luiz Teixeira de. Scielo Brazil – Revista Brasileira de Linguística Aplicada - https://www.scielo.br/j/rbla/a/ nNz3Jtj85xmms8MnNfwRpMn/?lang=en. Accessed: 05/02/2024.