This course is one half of the course Practical Language online and is taught by Aaron Collier. The other half is taught by Zdenek Janik. The assessment from the two halves is combined into one assessment that is necessary to pass.
This course is intended to help students increase their abilities to work in English. It is intended to work with all of the major skill areas found in the Common European Framework of References for Languages including: Listening, Reading, Writing, Spoken Interaction, Spoken Production. This will help students in their progression in English, leading up to the Complex Exam, which takes place in the exam period and will test students' general abilities with English.
As students are progressing in their studies toward becoming qualified teachers, this class also aims to help students learn about learning. We will focus on how students learn to use English and what the different approaches mean for future teachers. The course will attempt to help students become more self-aware about their abilities in English and different ways of identifying and improving weaknesses. This also means that the class will work towards allowing students more responsibility for their own learning, representing a more learner-centered approach to teaching.
The course will work through the second half of the book New English File Upper-intermediate.
Because we have only a limited amount of time in class, this online course will supplement our work. We will attempt to use this online area to especially practice reading, writing, and listening skills, so that we have time to focus in class on speaking, which is good to do with other people.
When in class, students are expected to use only English. This is the time for us to practice and the best way to practice is to speak.
Students are expected to log on to this course in the Information System at an absolute minimum of twice a week. As this course can be said to be worth 2 credits (as half of a 4-credit course), students are expected to work an average of 4 hours a week on the course including class time. If you have questions about this course, please ask them in the Information System. Do not wait to ask them in class. This will save us all time and effort.
Every student will be required (in one of our in-person meetings) to stand in front of the class and teach us all how to do something in five to eight minutes. This activity will help students develop their Spoken Production (and likely Interaction) skills. Students will also work on evaluating the performances of other students.
There will also be forums in Mood-Link-A that students are required to participate in. These forums will help students develop their Writing Fluency skills in terms of being able to write about various topics, in addition to developing Language Quality skills.
There will also be two longer written works also done through Mood-Link-A, which will work on developing writing skills in longer works, such as creating "well-structured" writing and using "appropriate styles" (quotes from the CEFR).
Students are expected to develop their personal language portfolios, demonstrating their self-awareness of their language skills and their abilities to match skills with appropriate assessments.
Lastly, students will have to work on setting and trying to achieve specific goals in developing their language skills and how to display achievements gained. This task is designed to help students become more independent in their learning.
Final evaluation of the class will be based on a 100 point scale. Students need to achieve 70 points to pass the class overall.
The points come from 5 different areas (note that the Forums and Essays will happen in the Mood-Link-A course associated with your other teacher):
Passing the class is necessary in order to sit for the Complex Exam. Students will also have to pass Grammar 1B and Phonetics and Phonology 1B. Students will know at the latest on 26 May if they have enough points to pass each of these classes and are therefore eligible to sit for the Complex Exam.
Each student will have to stand in front of the class and teach the whole class how to do something in 5 to 8 minutes. You must speak in English and involve the whole class in learning, but the topic is up to you (though I am always available for consultation). It can be anything as long as we learn how to do something.
In our first class meeting we will discuss what's important in evaluating teaching (how to spot good teaching). This will lead to an evaluation rubric, which we will use for evaluating the teaching. Each student will have to fill in the rubric for their classmates' teaching, and this will form the basis for 7.5 points for the assignment. I will fill in 7.5 more points based on these assessments, assuming that I see that people are evaluating fairly. You can then earn 0.5 points for each class where you are involved in giving helpful feedback as a class on your classmates' teaching.
The total is worth 20 points.
Each student will be responsible for maintaining their portfolio demonstrating personal language development. This portfolio will be developed throughout the time here at university in the Practical Language classes. Many of you will have done it the first semester of this course; this semester we will work on making them even better (meaning that expectations on the portfolios will be higher).
Beginning in the second week and continuing through the end of April, students can come to the teacher at any time outside of class (though it helps to ask about the time in advance) to present their portfolio for evaluation. It is also possible to make your portfolio only electronic and share it with the teacher in a different way as long as arrangements are made well before the deadline.
The portfolio must include each of the following items, (almost) each of which will be worth 1 point each:
This brings the total to 10 points.
Each part of the portfolio will be described in more detail over the course of the semester beginning in the second week.
One thing I would like to point out from my experience with previous students is that you should notice that the reflective statements are worth many more points than all of the other parts. This means that they are more important - you should think about that as you develop the portfolio. They show your progress as a language assessor and also help the reader see why the portfolio is showing what you want it to show.
To gain control of your own language learning, it is important to practice setting and reaching goals in your language development. We will work on setting SMART goals. You will need to work not just on goals that are about an activity (e.g., reading a book or studying more words), but on developing goals about a specific skill.
You will need to pick one or more statements from the Common European Framework of Reference for Languages (the can-do statements) that you would like to improve on. You should think about something you cannot do now or cannot do as well as you would like. You want to pick something that you can't do now that you think you will be able to do by the end of May.
Then after you have picked the thing that you will be able to say you can do, you can think about how you will develop this skill (what you will do to improve) and how you will measure the skill (how you will show that you have succeeded).
Remember that in order to get the most out of this activity, your goals should be Specific, Measurable, Achievable, Realistic, and Time-framed. So you need to be concrete and think about what exactly you will do and how exactly you will measure your improvement.
After you have sets goals there will be a time for you to review your progress in the middle of the semester and also at the end. You will not be evaluated based on whether the goal was reached, but based on whether you demonstrate reflection on what happened. In other words, you can still get points if you do not reach your goal. You will just have to write about why that happened and how to prevent it in the future.
Setting a goal will be worth 4 points. To get points, you must have your initial post made by the end of February.
A mid-term progress report will be worth 2 points. Your final reflections will be worth 4 points. This gives a total of 10 points. To gain points for these activities, you must finalize your goal (gain 4 points for the setting goals activity) no later than 10 March.