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Publication
No chains! – a case study in teaching English C2 in higher education
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| 6.65 MB | Adobe PDF |
Authors
Advisor(s)
Abstract(s)
As a Portuguese higher education professor of millennials, I have been often assailed by the haunting feeling of hopelessness and of time waste. From my perspective, it seems that my students belong to a different group and that little makes them focus on academic issues. In a personal attempt to find an answer, after many lively discussions with colleagues, I presented two papers at an international conference which delved, on the one hand, into the wrongs of current Portuguese education (e.g. lack of freedom, excess of bureaucracy, appeal of and dependence on coursebooks) and, on the other, into the future of education in the 21st century: whether it is doomed to failure. This has been the underlying motivation to decide to change my teaching practice and conduct an experiment, in the second semester of the academic year 2017/2018, with a group of C2 learners of English as a Foreign Language (FL), students of the bachelor’s degree in Languages for International Relations offered at my institution. The experiment was based on three assumptions: the first to obliterate the coursebook in the classroom; instead, an array of audiovisual materials – songs (with or without video clips), trailers, shorties, talks, newspaper articles and podcasts – were the starting point for all work and the basic materials throughout; at last, grammar books were avoided and vocabulary ones used only when necessary. Other resources were eventually taken into class to cater for any specific needs. Technology did have a saying, as other resources, but under no circumstances did it become the drive for running the classes. The course began with the negotiation of topics to be focussed with students and the elicitation of class dynamics. Students were always invited to participate, not only throughout the whole class (preventing the typical absent-minded attitude), but also by writing, in turn, class minutes, as well as class reviews. My initial intention also included setting up a course log, where I made notes of the lessons, with personal comments, and students’ accounts and feedback. Therefore, I aim at thoroughly presenting this case study (illustrated with examples) and reaching some tentative conclusions about teaching advanced English as a FL at the Portuguese higher education without a coursebook and from a student-centred approach.
Description
Keywords
21st education Teaching English at higher education Coursebook use Student teacher negotiation Active student participation
Pedagogical Context
Citation
Martins, Cláudia (2019). No chains! – a case study in teaching English C2 in higher education. In Manuel Vara Pires; Cristina Mesquita; Rui Pedro Lopes; Elisabete Mendes Silva; Graça Santos; Maria Raquel Patrício; Luís Castanheira (Eds.) IV Encontro Internacional de Formação na Docência (INCTE): livro de atas. Bragança: Instituto Politécnico. p. 1092-1103. ISBN 978-972-745-259-0
Publisher
Instituto Politécnico de Bragança