Case studies from the ELT project — K. M. Wathsala (Hanwella)
Wathsala teaches grades 6, 9, 10, 11 at an urban school in the Western Province. She has been teaching for 13 years and she has large classes of typically 45 students. The course has been very helpful to her with such large classes. She learnt the value of effective classroom management, the need for simple clear instructions, the need for practice of functional language and the positive impact of varied interaction patterns. She now has students who are much more confident in speaking in English.
As she did the course in 2020 she learnt not only about teaching English but also about the topic of employability skills. Raising awareness of employability skills was integrated into the course that year. She reported that she started the employability project in the third term with her grade 9 class. She grouped the students and they worked together, researched background knowledge on typical jobs in different parts of the country. They used the internet and the library to find information and they spoke to their parents about jobs in different generations. She felt that the integration of employability skills made a big impact on students’ ideas and future planning. She reported that it made students aware of thinking about their goals and the importance of starting to think about them. She felt that because they had done lots of research into different jobs they now knew how to achieve these jobs. As they said, ‘’Now we have many ideas about jobs.” She said it expanded their career horizons. She also felt that the development of critical thinking skills, another inclusion under employability skills, was very important. Here she got them to take on different job roles – for example, asking them to take on the role of characters (e.g. gem miner and gem merchant) and the students had to argue for which job is more important and/or difficult. This really made them think.
When asked what she liked and disliked about the training she explained that she liked the portfolio work but she expected the past papers a little earlier. One of the best classroom practices she learnt from the course was identifying and selecting aims. Before the course she only focused on the main and subsidiary aims. She didn’t phrase them in terms of what the students would be able to do by the end of the class. She felt this shift to a student perspective was important as they are the reason for teaching. She also learnt about having personal aims when planning lessons so she was continually learning. She learnt lots of techniques like asking questions, correcting learner language using error correction codes, giving examples for language practice, doing demos, using different interaction patterns and learning how to reflect on lessons and self-evaluate.
Her students have responded positively to her techniques post course. Before the course she did not use a correction code, but now she has prepared a code. She says that the students like the correction code and follow it. They like the happy faces on their work and they like to self-correct and peer correct. They find it motivating. She says this has made the class work flexible and time saving. Here are some quotes from her students, “We like the extra activities given after reading lessons,” “We enjoy the listening activities like ‘Telephone’ “, “We like activities which are done at the beginning of the class” [i.e. Warmers].
The most important impact of the course on students learning in her English classroom is the change in the students’ attitude to learning English. She gives one example of this. She took on a grade 11 class that had got lost in grade 10. They didn’t want to learn English and had a negative attitude to it. But she insisted it was very useful and she managed to make them work with the language in interesting and motivating ways. And she says it was not because she forced them to do it. It was because they learnt the value of learning. The result: 5 students with B passes and most with credits. In addition they are now looking for ways to learn English on their own.
