eaquals 2014 teaching life skills with mec (rebecca evans)
TRANSCRIPT
‘Teaching life skills through English with the EAQUALS
English Campus’
Rebecca Evans, Macmillan Education
EAQUALS 2014, Budapest
What are life skills?
“abilities for adaptive and positive behaviour that enable individuals to deal effectively with the demands and challenges of everyday life” (World Health Organization)
Why is teaching language no longer enough?
“… as English becomes more generally available, little or no competitive advantage is gained by adopting it. Rather, it has become a new baseline: without English, you are not even in the race.”
David Graddol, English Next (2006), The British Council
Inspiration from an astronaut!
Interview with Col. Chris Hadfield
4 areas for developing life skills
Thinking skills
Creativity and imagination
Problem solving Decision making
Self-knowledge
Critical thinking
Accessing and analysing
4 areas for developing life skills
Communication
People management
and leadership
Negotiation
Time management
Organization
Collaboration
Working skills
4 areas for developing life skills
Social skills
Citizenship
Cultural awareness
Negotiation
Respecting diversity
Social responsibility
Networking
Learning skills
4 areas for developing life skills
Flexibility and adaptability
Giving feedback Handling criticism
Innovation/ exploration
Learner autonomy
Computing
Why should we teach life skills?
• Good grades are not enough
• Better ‘transferable skills’
• Higher student motivation
• Better goal setting and outcomes
• Students more likely to gain employment
• More than just English lessons
• No loss of teaching time
• No special equipment needed
• No extra costs
So, what is the EAQUALS English Campus?
• Macmillan Education’s online platform for blended learning
• A database of over 65 ready-made courses, 30 tests and over 4,000 interactive activities
• Sophisticated progress tracking
• Includes speaking and writing practice activities
• Lots of extra exciting tools, including a dictionary, grammar reference database, weekly news articles and file sharing
• Suitable for institutions of all sizes
How can we use the EAQUALS English Campus to teach life skills?
Search for activities matching context and
goal Use collaborative tools to promote teamwork
and creativity
Personalize the process with Bookmarks and
My Files
Reinforce target language with activities
after class
Use Word Lists to teach relevant
vocabulary
How to teach life skills with the EAQUALS English Campus
Step 1. Choose a life skill
Get your inspiration from:
• Your students’ needs and requests
• Approaching life events (exams, interviews, new job)
• Coursebook units and themes
• Macmillan’s dedicated life skills website (www.macmillanenglish.com/life-skills)
Step 2. Choose the target language
If you want to teach a particular piece of language with your life skill, these types of lessons are a great way of teaching language in a way that is:
• Memorable
• Applicable
• Contextually-relevant
How to teach life skills with the EAQUALS English Campus
Step 2. Choose the target language
Some examples of sourcing language from a life skill:
Step 3. Choose your resources
Finding resources to teach your life skills lesson will depend on a number of factors, including:
• Available digital facilities (can students work on the Campus in class, or just at home?)
• Your chosen lesson model (TTT, PPP, ARC)
• The outcome of the life skill you’re teaching (is it an individual skill, such as managing your time, or a group skill, like working in a team?)
How to teach life skills with the EAQUALS English Campus
Step 1. Choose your life skill
Our life skill is Prioritizing information
The context of this skill is Choosing which subjects to study at school or college
Step 2. Choose the target language
Our target language is Vocabulary and language chunks for expressing personal opinions
Our lesson
Step 3. Choose your resources.
The scenario:
• My students only work on the EAQUALS English Campus at home, as we have limited computers at the school
• The lesson duration is 50 minutes
• I want to see how much students know before class
• I want to get the students working together during the lesson so I want to focus on collaborative and productive skills in class
Our lesson
Before class:
• I assign students three or four Bookmarked practice activities to: Introduce them to some useful phrases on expressing personal opinions
and making choices
Revise basic forms of the present simple
Get them thinking about which subjects they like and dislike
• I create a Word List containing key vocabulary that I want them to learn before our lesson
• Once students have completed the exercises, I look at their marks and identify common problems to tackle during class
Example lesson plan
During class:
• Lead-in to refresh student’s knowledge of pre-set vocabulary
• Tackle problems with the target language
• Set up the collaborative activity: • give students an information pack with a range of school subjects, with
class times, teacher profiles and assessment criteria (number of essays, exams) to read through
Example lesson plan
A collaborative task for prioritizing information:
• Group students and ask them to create pro/con lists of each subject
• Groups take turns to present their lists to the class
• Groups go back and reconsider their lists, possibly making changes
• Class then decide what the most and least important factors are when choosing subjects to study at school
More Macmillan Life Skills lesson ideas and plans available online
Example lesson plan
After class:
• Groups work together after class to compose a summary of the lesson:
• Skills they learned
• Best ways of prioritizing information
• How they could use these skills in a new context
• Upload to myPad within the EAQUALS English Campus
• Groups swap myPad pages and peer-correct
• Teacher can create a document of all new vocabulary and ideas raised during the lesson and share via My Files
• Teacher can set language or skills activities for individual students if needed
Example lesson plan
For more on life skills…
Macmillan English Life Skills resources:
• A new theme every month
• Multiple lesson plans, quizzes, video interviews and case studies released every month throughout 2014
• Special resources on pragmatics and creative writing
• Life Skills Day, a free and unique online conference, on Wednesday 14th May 2014
For more on life skills…
Macmillan Life Skills website: www.macmillanenglish.com/life-skills
Onestopenglish Life Skills resources: http://www.onestopenglish.com/skills/integrated-skills/life-skills/
Macmillan Dictionary Life Skills Pragmatics resources: http://www.macmillandictionary.com/learn/pragmatics2014.html
Macmillan Readers Thinking Creatively series: http://www.macmillanreaders.com/resources/self-study-english/creative-writing
For more on the EAQUALS English Campus…
Come along to a live online demo, get free logins and ask questions!
https://campusdemo.eventbrite.co.uk
Thank you very much!
Rebecca Evans, Macmillan Education
EAQUALS 2014, Budapest