Planning Synchronous Language Classes

Town of Tisma, Masaya, Nicaragua - Photo by Jonathan Acuña

Planning Synchronous Language Classes

By Prof. Jonathan Acuña-Solano, M. Ed.

School of English

Faculty of Social Sciences

Universidad Latina de Costa Rica

Friday, June 29, 2018

Post 325

          “Synchronous online classes provide opportunities for students to practice speaking. This is especially important for students taking courses online or in blended mode, where they have fewer opportunities for speaking than in 100% face-to-face courses” (The Consultants-E, 2017). Synchronous sessions cannot be handled in the same way that we hold F2F classes with language learners; the fact is that in a F2F session we teachers tend to do the teaching rather than have students do the learning by themselves online. But when it comes to talking about fully online language courses, pupils face themselves with the need to be provided with chances to practice their speaking and communication skills.

          What is then an instructor meant to do during his “live” synchronous working sessions with the learners? Part of the answer to this question is linked to the kind of instructional design model that is used to build up each practice session with the students. At the beginning when my curricular design team was confronted with the challenge to come up with an online ELF (English as a Lingua Franca) program, most of the things we did was to collect activities that could complement the autonomous online work our students have. With a bit of trial and error and then redefining what we were doing to have students practice, I went back to my books and started reviewing the scope of the ADDIE Instructional Design approach to working with distance education and synchronous and asynchronous courses. And as the model proposes, one has to come up with a design/development structure to cope with ELF-practicing needs in a virtual classroom (VC).

          To give a more solid answer to the above question about the instructor’s work in the VC with ELF students, an instructional model for online practice was proposed. Since our learners do not have a core course book, they access the material they must learn from the LMS provided by the publisher we work with.  Basically, a sequence of steps was proposed to have pupils deal with the thematic unit content they cover autonomously: 1) Review, 2) Controlled Activity, 3) Breakout Room (BR) session, and 4) Extension Activity. The flexibility of the model allows us to provide as many reviews as needed, and the same applies to controlled activities or BR sessions. The one condition for all of these learning activities as tasks is that learners are the ones doing the talking most of the time.

Review Activities	Since the course my students are taking is fully online and with all resources for their learning on the course LMS, a series of review activities were designed and developed to activate student “prior learning” while working independently. For us this has been a way to verify the right pronunciation of new lexical items or the correct use of a syntactical point. These review activities are the backbone of the tasks that come immediately after. And as mentioned before, to make sure that they are their new knowledge is activated, we have these activities as part of the lesson.
Controlled Activities	The second step in our work on a given thematic unit is the use of controlled activities to work with learners on vocabulary and grammar. Controlled activities are simple ways for me, the instructor, to know whether students can or cannot use the lexical items in the correct context and how proficient they have become with structures pertaining the thematic unit, things they have worked autonomously prior their participation in the VC. It becomes a way to verify student comprehension of new content and whether they are or not ready to start “playing” with the new piece of language learned by themselves.
BR Sessions	As it does happen in a F2F classroom where we organize pair and group work to have learners practice what we are studying, the BRs are of great importance for the sake of their learning; the BR allows them to practice both lexis and syntax in a meaningful context where -in the real world- they could be using their new knowledge. The BR sessions for me have become the place for production activities we all language instructors look forward to having with our students so they can manipulate language in a meaningful context for them, a context that reflect what they can encounter in the real world.
The cycle of review activities, controlled activities, and BR sessions is repeated as many times it is necessary within the class. That is, depending on the grammar foci included in each thematic unit, this cycle repeats itself to have learners activate their “prior learning” to benefit from all activities. For instance, if the unit contains four grammar foci, there might me a minimum of two to three cycles where syntactical points are grouped and practiced from “hand-led” reviews to fully independent practice in pairs or small groups.
Extension Activity	These activities are created to motivate learners to go beyond the VC and to continue practicing English on their own. An extension activity consists of an autonomous task where students are prompted to use the language meaningfully and practically in various types of sets of activities: 1)    Interviews to people outside the VC and to report to the class even if these are in their first language, 2)    Real-life reading tasks where learners are sent to read a native speaker’s type of reading on webpages, to answer questions about content and to activate their higher thinking order skills (HOTS). In class there is usually a report/discussion about the topic, and 3)    Video-viewing tasks where students have to listen to a video created for and by native speakers. Selective listening is encouraged to provide specific details about the video information and questions to activate their HOTS, too.

          “It’s important to remember that unless students get a chance to practice using the language in realistic communicative situations, they are unlikely to learn to use English effectively. So when we hold synchronous classes with students, we need to ensure that they get plenty of opportunities to produce English, in pairs and in small groups” (The Consultants-E, 2017). What happens if this “practice” does not take place in the virtual classroom? Learners are just practicing with “static” language in the platform but does not get to use it meaningfully for communication. As it can be concluded, planning synchronous classes is a complex task that can be achieved if executed correctly.

References

The Consultants-E. (2017, June 29). Planning Synchronous Classes. Retrieved from Train2Do: http://www.train2do.com/moodle/mod/page/view.php?id=56701&inpopup=1