2. Who speaks during my classes and lectures?
Feedback: Just listening to a lecture is quite intense. A student needs to process anything from 8000 up to 10 000 words per hour. By allowing students to speak (with you or each other), you offer them some recuperation time and a chance to process the content. Maaike Hajer (2009) even suggests leaving half of the time for student
interaction. Indeed, interaction offers opportunities for
language production, speaking and writing, which increases the effectiveness of learning.Follow these
6 tips for effective lectures.
4. During lectures or classes, I avoid difficult, academic vocabulary.
Feedback: Words and expressions that suit an academic register should
not be avoided. Yet, students need to get the opportunity to learn the new vocabulary through gradual, frequent exposure and with specific attention. An ideal setting contains of a rich and accessible language offer. By commuting back and forth between academic and day-to-day language, students gradually capture the new vocabulary. If you yourself are lost for words, this list of
classroom English might offer inspiration.
5. I use the blackboard during lectures and classes to make visual representations of the content and to note down key words.
Feedback: Using the blackboard is a method to offer
visual support. Don’t just put your visual representation on the projection, but build it up step by step with the students. The same goes for new and important vocabulary. When lecturers write a word down, students copy this faster and take this in more easily, which helps them to already partially process the new and/or important word. It offers support for
students' note-taking.
6. Colleagues have proofread my syllabus for correctness and clarity.
Feedback: A rich, correct and accessible language usage is a requirement for all course material. Every lecturer functions as a role model for a clear and professional language. You can ask colleagues to screen your course material in order to improve the accessibility and correctness of the course material. Read each other’s course and mark what is unclear or incorrect. Through this small intervention, the quality of your material will improve considerably..
7. When students speak or write, I give positive feedback like “Well said” or “You formulated that in a professional way”.
Feedback: There are three categories of language feedback. The first category is positive feedback. Positive feedback positively reinforces students to answer and is also important for the self-confidence of students.
8. When I give an assignment, I take the time to go over the evaluation criteria, including language demands.
Feedback: Students often experience difficulties to understand the instructions of their lecturers. At first sight, instructions and criteria seem straight forward and clear. Only later, when writing, do students realize that not everything is self-explanatory.
9. During my classes, I correct students' answers and the way they are delivered.
Feedback: Set high expectations for the students’ language use ! Often lecturers are insecure to do this because they doubt their own language proficiency. Yet, after graduating, students will be employed in the professional field with similar language demands. You don’t have to nitpick, but sometimes you should offer explicit feedback on unprofessional or improper language use and correct what is wrong yourself. Implicit feedback, for example repeating an improved version, is also fine.
10. When students make a written assignment, I provide feedback on their writing and the language used.
Feedback: An adequate response for each assignment is crucial. If you don’t give feedback after a presentation or paper, then you are undermining the
intrinsic motivation of students (Clement & Laga 2013).
Individual feedback is not always possible. For bigger groups you can fall back on
collective feedback and feedback forms or
checklists.
11. Whenever students get a written assignment (like an internship report or a self-reflection), I provide them with some examples for reference.
Feedback: It is important to offer good examples to students. Some lecturers avoid this out of fear for copy-pasting or because students might stick to the examples too closely. Yet, selected examples are a great method/approach to offer language support and offer invaluable insight into the expectations of an assignment.
12. When students have to read a text in class, I give instructions how to do this best (e.g. focus on titles and subtitles, mark key words, only highlight the main ideas…).
Feedback: When you have an eye for language strategies, you are making students self-reliant. They develop an active and independent study attitude. These strategies are useful for reading (e.g. distilling the essence from a text), writing (e.g. making a structure before you start to write), vocabulary (e.g. understanding a new word based on the context or the form), studying (e.g. reminding associations) and social activities (e.g. asking questions). Or to use a proverb: “Give a man a fish, and you feed him for a day; show him how to catch fish, and you feed him for a lifetime.”
13. Language is a point on the agenda of degree programme meetings, department or team meetings.
Feedback: Feedback: There is a general misconception that language development is a task of secondary education. Although you can expect students to have a certain independence and (language) maturity, higher education also has a role to play in the (professional and academic) language development of students. Systematic attention for the language usage of students isn’t a job for the language coach or lectures English /Communication skills. A joint effort of the entire team is the best way to insure transfer. Eventually both student and lecturer will reap the rewards of better language skills.
14. My syllabus has a word list that holds the most important jargon and/or difficult (academic) vocabulary.
Feedback: Students in higher education don’t just pick up jargon, they are also confronted with academic vocabulary like framework, consistency or homogenous. Language support can take the form of offering a wordlist as well as stimulating students and showing them how to use this wordlist.
15. I often link my course content to current events or day-to-day examples from the students’ lives.
Feedback: When you connect new content to current events or examples from the lives of students, they can remember the content better. You offer context, a framework to situate the new knowledge. Paying attention to language during classes doesn’t require much effort nor is it a new approach. It looks at the means we use to transfer knowledge, language, and builds on research in language teaching and general didactical principles.
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