What and Why?
Student involvement is probably the single most important factor in language learning, especially with students in the early secondary school years. One of the greatest causes of drop out and student failure in learning is that they do not feel part of their course. For this reason, the encouragement of student involvement is one of key principles in CES. The aim is to involve the students as fully as possible in their English course, such that they feel it is theirs and one which is personally relevant to them. CES contains numerous practical ideas in relation to student involvement. The following are some of the basic principles we have adopted.
Practical ideas
- Start from the students. When introducing a new topic, find out what the students already know about it and what they would like to know about it.
- Encourage regular evaluation of how they are learning and take steps accordingly
- Provide choices between tasks. Students do not have to be doing the same things all the time. Allow them to decide and room for do it yourself.
- Provide creative tasks which draw on the students imagination, experience and personal views.
- Provide 'larger' tasks, such as whole activities, where students can feel freer to work in their own way.
- Draw on the mother tongue as a means of involving the students knowledge about how language works.
- Involve students in the production of tests and make tests less threatening.
- Focus on topics which are worth learning about in their own right, and which have curriculum links.
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