Musical Exams

I had an idea this week. That's not exactly a rare occurance but it did happen. It actually happened last week too but I never got round to writing about that one. 

Anyway, I digress. This week's idea was relevant for EVERY. SINGLE. CLASS. The debate went deeper the higher the level but the core idea was relevant from 7 years old all the way to adult. The example I'm going to give today is with the FCE exam but it can be adapted to any activity, be it worksheet or book based. 

I started the class by telling students they were going to participate in a psychologial experiment based around the effects of music on concentration. At no point did I mention the fact they would be doing 4 seperate Use of English part 2 activities. 

I told them they would listen to 4 different songs and complete activities whilst the music was playing. This served as both a distraction and a time limit. The 4 genres were. Drum and Bass, Rock, Pop and Classical. I informed the students it was to see which type of music was best for concentration and which was worst and we'd hold a plenary after we'd finished the activity.

The next step was to rehash exam technique for part 2. When doing this I always use this from  https://www.fceexamtips.com/reading-2-3. I also make a list of the most common words that come up, just in case they are lost and need to fill a gap.  At the end we double check the 4 different exam parts and see how many of those words came up. 

Next I handed out the first part 2. I told students not to start until the music had begun. 

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Q89OdbX7A8E

Students then complete the task. We don't correct it. We move straight on to the next task accompanied by the greatest band of all time the foo fighters. 

https://www.youtube.com/results?search_query=all+my+life+foo+fighters

After that we quickly move on to a pop song of the moment. I went with Love Someone by Lukas Graham because all of the students know it and they found it espacially hard to concentrate because they were so distracted by the song they knew and loved. 

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dN44xpHjNxE

Finally we did Pacelbel's Canon

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NlprozGcs80

This last tune was a bit longer and gave them a bit of calm time to double check all their answers.

After we'd finished the final task we had a quick discussion. 

The basic questions I asked were: Which music was most difficult to concentrate with? Why?

Which was easiest? Why?

Which did you find most stressful? why?

Which did you find most relaxing? Why?

Which one do you think you got the best score on? 

Now obviously there is very little science behind this as some student may do better on different tasks, some tasks may be easier and also by the time they're doing their forth exam part they are well into the groove of things and it sohould be much easier by then. 

That said, we then corrected everything and took down the scores.  In general it wasn't a great shock that the best scores came out with the classical music, the worst, however, were with thethe pop music as students were too busy singing as opposed to doing the activity.  We then checked which words came up most frequesntly. 

This was a great activity for the students not only to help with their debating and discussion skills but also as pure exam revision. When doing 4 UOE part 2s they noticed that the word SO came up every single time. 

Hope this helps

H

Character Build

Good Afternoon,

As the term has been dragging on for what seems like an eternity and a bit, I decided this last week before the break I'd do something a little more light hearted. Although it wasn't that light hearted, but it was fun. I used this with classes ranging from A2- B2. It was a simple character build but rather than just put in random characteristics I asked them to act as if they were that person and truly, honestly try and expess what they might be feeling.
The class is basically 3 fold and for once I didn't tell them why they were following the powerpoint and thus, the class.

Part one I took notes on which groups they joined.
Then when they got a picture I focused on their reaction. A number of them asked to change.
The next part was what was most interesting. It was watching how the students approached te task. Some of it quick horrifying to be honest.

Keep an eye on where they go with the task.

The key is the reflection. When looking back at their work and reflecting upon their snap judgements and their hugely stereotyped responces actually got a few students to stop and think for a moment. I recommend spending quite a while on both the linguistic benefits of the activity and the morality based self review.

Hope it's of use. Here is the powerpoint

H

FCE Reading Part 7 Made Fun.... well, slightly less boring at least

In my experience this is the part of the reading exam where students do best. They tend to get at least 6 or 7 right, becuase it's usually quite obvious. I created this class to make it more interactive and for students to think individually but then also as a team. I also used it to enable students to improve their paraphrasing and as a way of retelling what they'd learnt. In the end it was really successful and every group, even with the weakest students got at least 8 correct answers.

So what's the process.

First up I find a vaguely interesting reading. With something, at least mildly, relatable to the class. Something to do with sport perhaps.
I find any tricky or complex vocabulary and preteach it. I draw students attention to the wide range of collocations used in the text and allow them to reflect for a moment or two on their own speaking and writing. It gives the students time to digest everything before the task.

Next I ask students to get into groups of 4 or 5 and have a quick talk about the topic of the text their about to read. (Perhaps it's one person speaking maybe it's 4/5 differdent people. There is, however, a central topic that can be discussed at length. I try and ensure students use some of the vocabulary taken from the text in order to solidify its meaning and useage.
In the example below I picked out
Big Grins
unstoppable Appitite (I also mentioned insatiable as a collocation)
Rolling Waves 
Vast Amounts
Hang Around
Itching to do something
A drop in temperature
To blossom
Spray
instinctive
hair-raising
never be bothered

Next tell them the title of the text they are going to read and get students to hypothesize about what they are going to read.
In this case the title was from the online handbook sample paper:

Walking On Waves

Sarah Whiteley talks about her love of surfing and how it began

After they've spoken for 4-5 minutes tell students they are each going to get a paragraph of Part 7.

But first they are going to read through the questions, paying close attention to key words and underlining them (here they're in bold).

1. feeling satisfaction that her determination resulted in better performance?
2. the problem of having to wait for conditions to be favourable for surfing?
3. a change which helped her to pursue her hobby?
4. continuing to surf even when the conditions were unfavourable?
5. the pleasure she gets from seeing others succeed?
6. being aware that it would take time for her abilities to be recognised?
7. her enthusiasm for the sea being recognised by someone else?
8. an admission that she doesn’t think about what she is doing when surfing?
9. not being concerned that she stood out from others?
10. people appreciating her serious attitude towards her surfing?

This is when I give each student a different part of the exam.

Person A in each group gets:

 

Person B: 

Person C: 

Person D:

Person E:


When students have finished reading they tell each other abou their paragraph. Not only what it was about but also any interesting language or collocation they came across. EG: Person D might say, it mentions vast amounts of hanging around. Which is a better way to say we had to wait a long time.
Person C might mention something not happening overnight, which means it takes a long time.
Person B could talk about the collocation to be exceptionally good at something and how they'll try and use it in future. 

After the students have talked about their paragraphs they again go over the questions and decide which paragraph pertains to which question. They then have to underline the relevant text.
When it's all finished they report back to the class.  Low and behold most of them will get 8 or 9 at the very least.

My final step is to then give students 15 minutes to do a different part 7 of the exam. This tends to calm them down.

A worksheet is avilable here Walking on Waves.

Below are the answers for the about take.
1)C
2) D
3) A
4) B
5) E
6) C
7) A
8) E
9) B
10) D

Question Formation KET

I've got this class you see, well, I've got about 10 of them. In this class we've got a really wide range of abilities. The battle for me is finding activities that keep 25 students engaged and learning at the same time when they're all of such varying levels and, of course, concentration spans.

This week I've been working with my 5th and 6th grade classes (both studying for A2 level exams KET and FLyers in this case). The biggest issue I've found with both levels is their inability to form a question. It stems from the fact Spanish uses intonation to signal questions and there is no rewording involved.

In the second part of the speaking exam (for now at least) students need to form questions with prompts and their partner needs to answer. Up until the other day we'd simply been using exam sample. I decided that students should design their own club/class/shop and make a pamphlet for said activity.  I modeled it, gave them and example and let their imaginations do the rest.

I told students they needed:
A name for the club/class/shop
An address
What can be learnt/bought
Opening times
A phone number
An email address
An age range
and a price. 
I then posted my example on the board.

After students had seem my example I elicited questions out of them. Without the use of prompts with 6th grade, with prompts with 5th grade. 

We came up with:

What's your class called?              (called)

What do you do in the classes?        (Do)

What do you do in the class start?   (time/start)

When are the classes?                        (When)

What time does the class finish?       (time/finish)

How much are the classes? or how much do the classes cost?   (How much) 

Where are the classes?              (where)

How can I get more information?    (more information)

Is it for teenagers?                (teenagers)

What number should I call?    (Phone number)

Is there an email address?      (email)

When modeling I tried to encourage students to not only ask the questions but to respond to their partners answers. 

A: What is the call called? 

B: It's called Cool Down Dragon

A: Ahhh, that's a... cool name. haha. What time do the classes start?

B: They start at a quarter past seven, in the evening. 

A: That's great, I'll have time for a snack first. How much do the classes cost?

and so on. 

If you want a handy worksheet version just have a little look here: Create Your Own Club Question Formation Worksheet.

It gave students a personal investment in the activity, it got them thinking about what was going to be asked in the KET exam and it gave them ownership. 

The students then spent 20 minutes goinjg round asking their partners what they had created and all about their classes. 

The biggest winner for me in this was that my weakest students got to feel on a par with the strongest students as the language was very simple and they could use their creative side. 

All in all a winner. Give it a shot. 

Now even though the KET exam is changing next year this is a great way to work on question formation. SO don't throw it out just yet. 

Have a lovely weekend one and all. 

H