Questões de Concursos

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Making homework count

By Stephanie Hirschman

October 8, 2024

Homework and independent study can make a massive contribution to students’ progress, particularly when classes don’t meet daily, or students aren’t living, working or studying in anglophone environments. There are several issues to consider when setting homework.

Why students are doing homework is a fundamental question which can cover a wide spectrum of reasons. The most obvious is that it offers both teachers and students a chance to check on learning and identify areas for further review and consolidation. Exam preparation courses make use of homework to consolidate and accelerate learning and deliver results. Finally, some institutions require teachers to set homework and some clients, for example parents, believe that a course with homework offers better value for money.

Whatever the reason behind setting homework, be clear with students about how they’ll benefit from the assignment, how to do it effectively, how long they should spend on it and how it will be marked.

The homework that many people expect from a language course is “more of the same” exercises, that is, those that offer extra opportunities to practice grammar or vocabulary from the lesson.

It is also possible to bring in practice from other online or print sources, but this can sometimes be problematic, especially for lower levels. Make sure that the resource you choose maps onto the lesson content without placing extra demands on students, for example, by introducing a completely different context or topic with unfamiliar vocabulary to practice a grammar point. You also need to make sure that terminology is consistent – students who are expecting to practice present continuous may not recognize that it is also called present progressive. With lower levels, go over the instructions and/or demonstrate one of the exercises so they know how to get started.

It's worth mentioning here that flipped learning may also be a useful approach to homework. This is where students preview part of the lesson plan (like a reading or listening task) or research a general topic independently before class in order to maximize opportunities for communicative activities during the lesson.

Other types of homework include semi-controlled practice of target language. Students could write personal sentences including vocabulary items or grammatical structures from the class – note that they may need training to do this. A sentence like, “The milk went off,” is not as effective for learning as, “We had no milk for the coffee this morning – it went off because we didn’t put it in the fridge last night.” You may wish to provide some question or example prompts as support.

An unusual and motivating type of speaking homework is a personalized bingo game. Students create their own bingo card, which might be a 4x4 grid. In each cell, they write a key word or structure from the lesson that they wish to practice during the next few days. They carry the card around in their pocket, and every time they use an item of target language, they can tick it off, aiming to complete a line. This is especially suitable for students who are living, working or studying in anglophone environments. Teachers can monitor progress regularly and even offer small prizes.

The question of what teachers actually do with homework also has multiple possible responses, which will depend on the teaching context. At one end of the spectrum, if there is good buy-in from the students, teachers may only need to point them towards a selected set of “more of the same” exercises and make sure the answers are accessible for self-checking. Make it clear that you welcome questions if anything isn’t clear and test regularly to check understanding.

Whatever choices you make about homework, here’s one final tip. It’s best to complete assignments the day after receiving them and not on the same day. Research on spaced repetition shows that reviewing information after around 24 hours, “just before you forget it,” is the most effective way to boost retention.

Adapted from: https://www.linguahouse.com/blog/post/makinghomework-count

Acesso em 25/10/2024

Read the text to answer the question from.

It happens that the publication of this edition of the Oxford Advanced Learner’s Dictionary comes 250 years after the appearance of the first comprehensive dictionary of the English language, compiled by Samuel Johnson. Much has changed since then. The English that Johnson described in 1755 was relatively well defined, still essentially the national property of the British. Since then, it has dispersed and diversified, has been adopted and adapted as an international means of communication by communities all over the globe. English is now the name given to an immensely diverse variety of different usages. This obviously poses a problem of selection for the dictionary maker: which words are to be included in a dictionary, and thus granted recognition as more centrally or essentially English than the words that are left out?

Johnson did not have to deal with such diversity, but he too was exercised with this question. In his Plan of an English Dictionary, published in 1747, he considers which words it is proper to include in his dictionary; whether ‘terms of particular professions’, for example, were eligible, particularly since many of them had been derived from other languages. ‘Of such words,’ he says, ‘all are not equally to be considered as parts of our language, for some of them are naturalized and incorporated, but others still continue aliens...’. Which words are deemed to be sufficiently naturalized or incorporated to count as ‘parts of our language’, ‘real’ or proper English, and thus worthy of inclusion in a dictionary of the language, remains, of course, a controversial matter. Interestingly enough, even for Johnson the status of a word in the language was not the only, nor indeed the most important consideration. For being alien did not itself disqualify words from inclusion; in a remark which has considerable current resonance he adds: ‘some seem necessary to be retained, because the purchaser of the dictionary will expect to find them’. And, crucially, the expectations that people have of a dictionary are based on what they want to use it for. What Johnson says of his own dictionary would apply very aptly to The Oxford Advanced Learner’s Dictionary (OALD): ‘The value of a work must be estimated by its use: It is not enough that a dictionary delights the critic, unless at the same time it instructs the learner...’.

(Widdowson, H. Hornby, A.S. 2010. Adaptado)