I will delete those superfluous comments, by the way. I was just playing around and testing how the comments things work.

I would love to hear speculations from teachers or your students. Don’t be shy to leave comments.

If you want to do this off-line, here are the pictures themselves!

• Larry Ferlazzo has an exhaustive (of course) list of places for students to write and share online. Some of the blogging sites look good and I’d add Livejournal to the mix because of the social aspects. It’s really easy to make a friend’s list of friends’ blogs. And Bookemon looks awesome as well!
• Larry’s collection of places to write for authentic audiences is also really good. Or just encourage them to go on forums and blogs and contribute.
• I did an earlier post about Interactive Writing which applies here as well.
• This collection of Graphic Organizers is like brainstorming crack!
• As is Read-Write-Think.
• And I love Teaching Tools That Make Sense‘s lesson plans and worksheets for writers!

So I thought I would share two things here. One is a set of questions that DOES not work to get students thinking. These are questions that have obvious answers, or answers the students think are obvious.

Avoid the Obvious

I wrote a bit about this topic in getting students to speak already and one of the most important insights I think I made there (if I can be so egotistical) is that questions with obvious answers do not get students to talk and do not get them to think. Sometimes as teachers we try to play devil’s advocate or feign ignorance in order to elicit student participation. That can work well for grammar or vocab exercises but in critical thinking exercises it can often fall flat.

For example, ask a student, “Why should we exercise?” and he or she may say, “To be healthy.” You can’t really go on to say, “Well, why do we need to be healthy?” For the average student, this will sound so silly and they will be unable to articulate reasons because those reasons are so obvious to them. Can you articulate in relatively simple language why being healthy is important? Or can you formulate an interesting answer to why being healthy is BAD?

These may vary from culture to culture and place to place but questions that tend to have “obvious” answers include, “Should we have rules?”, “Should we learn English?” “Is terrorism bad?”, “Is being poor uncomfortable?”, and “Is the environment good?” So I don’t think asking these kinds of questions helps students think critically.

Challenging Their Culture

A side note here. We are sometimes tempted to push our views on students. We see something in their culture that we don’t like and we think that by raising this issue we can start a critical discussion AND maybe teach them some values. One example of this I see from time to time with my Muslim students is, “Why should women wear a headscarf?” or, “Why can’t women work?” It seems like asking these kinds of questions would generate a lot of language as they defend their position. And it can work. However, there are a few problems here.

First, to many students these cultural issues are obvious so the students aren’t going to have much to say about it. How much language would I get out of you if I asked you, “Why are women treated equally to men in the US?” Could you really talk about it all that much? It’s not something we question or believe should be questioned so the question is the answer. Women are treated equally because we believe that women should be treated equally. That’s not much language practice, is it?

Second, for that tiny bit of language you have raised a controversial issue that may make students feel attacked. Many of my Saudi students have a huge chip on their shoulders when it comes to women’s rights. Even saying the word, “woman” puts them on the defensive. Defensive students (or offended students) talk less, not more. So by making them feel attacked, I’m discouraging them from talking. And possibly losing any rapport I have with them.

Finally, I don’t think it’s our job to correct their values. It’s our job to teach them English. I’m not saying we let them run amok or let them say whatever they want, but ultimately our goal is to have them speak English better than they did when they met us. If a female student who used to wear a head scarf and veil came to me and said, “Teacher thank. I learn now 1 year you with. Learn me strong woman. No wear veil. Veil bad. Be engineer. Strong women me good. Thank thank teacher good yes,” I would feel like a failure. I taught her to be independent, which is excellent, but I didn’t teach her English.

That’s not to say that with the right group of students at the right level on the right day, you can’t have a wonderful discussion on women’s rights in Islam or political freedom in Belarus or female circumcision in Africa. But the assumption that challenging the students’ culture will automatically lead to lots of productive discussion AND leave them weeping and thanking you for freeing them from their inferior mindset is a big one.

Scaffolding for Critical Thinking

So enough about how NOT to do critical thinking. The biggest strategy I know of to get students to think critically is to scaffold your questions. This doesn’t mean dumbing down the questions until you get an answer. That is usually the opposite of encouraging critical thinking. I do mean bringing it down to their level. Here’s an example of a class discussion we had the other day when discussing why bystanders who are doctors don’t help people in emergency situations. It went more or less like this:

Me: So why do you think the doctor didn’t want to stop and help the people?
Student A: *after a long pause* the Doctor must help, because it is his job.
Me: It’s his job to help people in general, but is it his job to help THIS guy?
Student A: No.
Student B: Why not?
Student A: He is just driving by.
Student B: No, a doctor must help all people.
Student C: Teacher, in the US do you have this saying that doctors must say it, to help everyone.
Me: The Hippocratic Oath? Yes. They swear to help everyone and not harm anyone. Do they do this in your country.
Student C: Yes.
Me: How about in China, Student D?
Student D: I think so, I think yes. I don’t know.
Student E: Yes. My mother is a doctor, yes.
Me: So your mother is a doctor. Has she been in this situation?
Student E: What situation?
Student A: She sees an accident and has to help?
Student E: No. I don’t think so. Maybe. I ask her.
Me: Ok, awesome. So doctors have to promise not to hurt people. And to help people. So it’s weird that this guy doesn’t help. Isn’t it?
Students: Yes
Me: Did we read anything about this before?
Student A: Yesterday, about bystanders. They are not involved.
Me: So is it his job to help this guy in this accident?
Students: Yes, No, maybe….
Me: Why is it hard to tell?
Student A: Because of the oath.
Student B: Because he is a bystander.
Student C: What does it mean, residency?
Me: Why do you ask?
Student C: In the story it says he is doing a residency. Is it the same as doctor?
Me: Good! No. That’s important.

I then briefly explained the medical education system in the US, and the fact that this guy wasn’t licensed yet. That, of course, helped them to clarify a huge problem and then we went on to discuss the nuances.

What I tried to do here, even when scaffolding was to ask open questions that didn’t have Yes/No answers. But I also tried to involve weaker students by asking a smattering of easier questions. Obviously, this was an advanced class so weak is a relative term here. Shy students also need easy Yes/No or short answer questions to warm up and loosen their jaws a bit. But in general scaffolding should involve open questions and bringing in more resources.

I also think an important principle here is balancing guiding students to a right answer and having no idea what they are going to say. On the one hand, if there’s no “right” answer in your mind, then the discussion will go on forever. I wanted students to mention that this guy wasn’t legally a doctor yet and therefore he could be sued if he practiced medicine. That point was complicated but it was implied strongly in the reading so it wasn’t terribly difficult to get to (if they did the reading!). So that gave me an end point. It also gave me a point of view, which is authentic. Usually when we discuss issues with friends, we have an opinion and we try to convince people of it. If I have a right answer in my head, I have an opinion and we can have a more authentic discussion than if I was just asking question after question.

On the other hand, I hadn’t expected the Hippocratic Oath to come up. And later students mentioned issues of consent (the victim was unconscious) and religious issues and so on. By letting students guide the discussion and bring up new things, I’m also letting them have an authentic discussion. And express themselves. Critical thinking does mean breaking down walls. Asking open-ended questions means you don’t know what answer you are going to get.

So those are my thoughts on asking good and bad questions. As always, I love feedback, comments, suggestions, critiques.

• English Central Watch and listen to videos, then talk along. Practice Intonation, Pronunciation, and speaking skills!
• Live Mocha A whole community approach to learning English. Or any other language. Really in-depth and involved, and it looks like it is all free!

After months of neglect, I have tweaked a few small things on the blog.

1) I got bored of the Post-it Note blockquote format, so I went a little classier. Note the drop cap and the little picture and the italics. Any suggestions to change it more? Or is it too much?

2) I also fixed a confusion with Tweets and Asides. One is supposed to be blue and the other pink but there was some bad CSS syntax on my part. I started a new idea a while back to use the built-in Asides post format for “Note to Myself” type posts, of which there was one or two. I made them pink Post-it Notes since Lesson plans are yellow Post-it Notes and Tweets are Blue. (Green is next, I suppose, and then purple. I think Images are black but I never put images up here). And I just went ahead and cut-and-pasted all the code for the Tweet/Status post-types and referred it to Asides, without cleaning it up too much. Oops!

Then when I began the 30 gaols goals project, I thought this Aside format would be perfect for those as well. So I began using it more. And couldn’t figure out why my Asides weren’t pink but my Tweets were (not the punchline to a dirty joke).

3) Finally, I fixed a few small grammar errors and expanded some margins and paddings here and there to make it look a bit more readable. Unless you’ve been reading through a microscope, you won’t notice the changes consciously. But trust me, your unconscious is very happy now.

That was just to let you know in case you did notice weird things going on.  As always, comments, suggestions and complaints are welcome.

Love,

Walton

I’ll state my own criteria for a good language course or lesson now. A good lesson or course, to me, is one where there’s plenty of language learning going on and where the students and I:

• feel comfortable physically, socially and psychologically
• know a little about each other, why we are together and what we want to get out of the experience. (We also know these things may keep shifting slightly as we go through the course.)
• are aware of some of what there is to learn
• are aware of some of the things we have learned
• have a notion about how we learn best
• accept that language is a mixture of things (part instinct, motor skill, system, cultural artefact, music, part vehicle for content and part content itself), that it changes all the time and thus that we need to teach and learn it in a variety of ways
• know why we’re doing the activities we’re doing
• do things in class that would be worth doing and learn things that are worth learning for their own sake outside the language classroom
• become more capable of taking the initiative, making decisions and judging what is good and useful
• start useful habits which will continue after we have left each other
• follow our course and lesson plans or depart from them when necessary in order to bring about the criteria above.

These are some of the things that are necessary for me to consider a course or lesson good, for me to consider my work good!

I couldn’t agree more. I particularly like the stress on making students aware themselves of how they learn and why classroom time is spent the way it is.

• English Attack:Watch videos and answer questions about them. Or practice vocab sets. Only one free video a day however!
• ESL-Lab Short listenings. A variety of topics.
• ESL Podcasts Short conversations followed by explanations and analysis. Learn slang, idioms and work on understanding native speakers better!

• Into the Book a site to teach strategies for reading. The texts are a bit simplified, but the strategies are great.
• NYTimes Learning Blog The New York Times has great activities, exercises and quizzes to practice learning about current events.
• List of Choose Your Own Adventure Games: from Larry Ferlazzo

• For Vocabulary

  • My Word Book is a vocabulary notebook on your iPhone, with a quiz mode. I love that it allows you to save not only the word and definition but also pictures, sentences and audio clips!
  • WordLayer which is a dictionary, but words are defined with pictures! Nice way to brush up on or review some vocabulary, though obviously not every word can be represented in a picture

• For Grammar

  • Grammar in Use Apps with tests and exercises related to the awesome grammar books from Cambridge University Press. What I love about the books is that they do in fact present grammar IN USE, very close to how we talk. Well, how British people talk for the most part, init?

• For Speaking

  • Speaking Pal is great for practicing pronunciation, but not much else. It provides fun, silly little dialogues. You listen and them perform one half of the dialogue. The app will only let you move on if it can understand you!