Lots gets said about the value of graded readers, but how can teachers use these in class? We speak with Diploma in TESOL course director Anne Carmichael about using graded readers with students at different levels, how teachers can integrate different skills using graded readers and how teachers can deal with new language from the texts.
Using Literature to Teach Language - Transcription
Ross Thorburn: Hi, everyone, welcome back to "TEFL Training Institute Podcast." This week, we're talking about using literature to teach language. We've talked on the podcast before about using graded readers to help students learn.
In this episode, we'll go into a bit more detail about how to actually use a graded reader with a class, almost in a way like you'd use a course book. To do that, we have Anne Carmichael.
Anne started off as a teacher in the 1960s. She's taught multiple languages. Since 2008, she has run TESOL Training Scotland, running Trinity diploma and TESOL courses around the world. Anne is based in Aberdeen in Scotland.
In this episode, Anne tells us about her experiences, basically throwing out her course book and replacing it with graded readers with her students. Lots of great ideas in this one for activities, for using graded readers to teach language. Enjoy the interview.
Ross: Hi, Anne. Tell us about using literature in language classes. We're not talking here about just passing out the original copies of Jane Eyre to the student, are we?
Anne Carmichael: No, but they got the B1 version of it, which is still in print, I've checked. It now has ‑‑ which you didn't then ‑‑ an audio version. At the time, these were classes for more casual English learners.
Aberdeen had so many incomers with the oil business. Mostly, they were the oil lives, but they were really keen to improve their English, most of them to integrate into the community. I had the idea that our lessons were residing in a course book too much. One day, I'd said to them, "How about we actually read a proper classic English novel, say by Jane Austen?"
Now, many of them had heard of Jane Austen. Many of them had perhaps read her in French translation. They all agreed that they would buy a copy. I got the bookstore to make sure they had enough copies.
I thought, "Well, each week we can take a different chapter and we can deal with it in a different way." For example, picking out, initially, ideas and reactions to chapter one and feelings. I felt, "Well, what these ladies most need is to somehow relate to feelings, emotions, even the literature, even the writing itself and relate to the characters and so on."
We would deal with that. It would be a little bit like a bond tie because one emotion would spark off vocab or more and more experiences. They could describe a time when they had felt overwhelmed. That would be perhaps one response to a chapter.
Another chapter, we might look at in terms of narrative and using the past tenses, anecdotes about moving house because Jane had to move from her aunt's rather luxury house to a horrible school, or going to school, things like that, so first impressions of school. We could relate it to that and also enjoy the literature.
We could do a little bit of prediction, so predictive stuff. We could also do role play. For the first time, Jane encounters Rochester. We could get the ladies up acting it out, perhaps making up a little bit more of the dialog themselves and learning it.
They would write it all down and script it, and then learn it and then come out to the front and perform it. We could then say imagine you were looking at this in a film. I don't think there was a film of Jane Eyre at that point. I'm going back a bit but who would you choose to act in it? Who would be the heroine? Who would be the hero in that film?
We would discuss who the best actors at that time were and so on. Perhaps do a mock film review, or disagree or agree with one another, "No, I don't think Meryl Streep would be the best person to act Jane. I think you need somebody thinner and more sad‑looking," or something like that.
That again developed. If you were to set it in a film, what background music would you use? If you were looking at old paintings, for example, what paintings would most reflect that particular chapter or scene that you were reading about? They would think about that. They would come with ideas.
It was actually developing it in far wider than just the story itself, but including the language and enabling the ladies to express their feelings, emotions, opinions about literature, film, life in general, moving to Aberdeen. How it was different from living in their home countries, for example.
Ross: For me, one of the challenges of using semi‑authentic materials like that is finding some language to focus on. Unlike in a course book, obviously in a graded reader, you won't have 30 examples of the past continuous in chapter one and then a dozen examples of the present perfect in chapter two.
It's not always so easy to find something to focus on. Do you want to tell us a bit more about how you can use graded readers and really focusing on some language point?
Anne: Obviously, it's particularly good for narrative. For the narrative tenses, it's very, very good. For the writing, that spills over into written reviews or written summaries of a chapter.
You can also do it written as predictive. I think, next week, [laughs] Charlotte will etc., etc., or I think the strange person in the attic will. [laughs] It's completely possible. Nothing is impossible. That's my philosophy anyway.
It can be made relevant and interesting, and yet follow a theme and instructional because they're dealing with English literature. You could do it with Emma. You could do it with Joseph Conrad. There are so many of these lovely really well‑adapted readers that you can use for that.
Ross: How then did you deal with new and unfamiliar words when you were teaching then? I think there's those rules that say that students need to know about 98 percent of the words in the text if they're going to be able to understand what they read. How did you make sure that students didn't get lost without too much new vocabulary?
Anne: I might have perhaps pre‑taught some of the vocabulary before we went on to a new chapter. In those days, it wasn't so much getting the students to work it out for themselves. In those days, pre‑teaching was quite the fashion.
It would have been based on what had gone before, so predicting, and then providing vocab lexis, perhaps expressions that I knew would be coming up in the next chapter.
Pre‑teaching is great but not in a sort of table ‑‑ here are 10 words, here are 10 definitions, match them up. Not cold quite like that but as some kind of warmer and elucidation where possible.
I also think it needs to be done in some kind of context, so you might be able to elicit some of the vocab through a well‑judged warmer. It can be very useful because if the students are being exposed to that within the last three or four minutes, then they're probably going to remember it when they actually hear it.
All that needs to be recycled and elicited at the end so that the grasp can be assessed, that they've actually got it and also that they can pronounce it properly. Obviously, it'd be on the board, it would be transcribed probably, and that it can be personalized.
Ross: Those were obviously slightly higher, maybe intermediate students. Do you want to tell us about using literature with lower level learners?
Anne: I had another group, also in the '70s, of Vietnamese refugees. Now, they should be in the boat people and for them, I chose Grace Darling. Many of them were near beginners, certainly elementary by the time we had them.
It was very personalized. It was very effective and I suppose to some degree with these beginners elementary, quite integrated in a way. I didn't expect them to read or write. It was purely listening and speaking.
A lot of them were in a family, so some of their ages range from probably 15 or 16 to about in their 70s. They came as a family and that was security for them. I thought, well, Grace Darling.
It's not too threatening about a disaster at sea but it is about a ship wreck, and some of them had been shipwrecked. It is again about feelings and emotions and responses and rescue, and I wanted them to be able to use that when they were talking to their social workers and so on.
They couldn't all read. I would sometimes read aloud, and they would simply listen. It was really a facilitating device, again, to compare and contrast their lives at home with their new lives here, which were very difficult, for some of them at the start, adapting.
You could barely imagine...You can imagine, you can but many people couldn't. The social workers, I didn't think could. It was important for them to have that resource if you like to draw on and to be able to express.
Some of them had been so abused as well during their boat journeys, some of the girls especially. It was hard but they seemed to be happy to talk about it. It was a very protective, very closed little group. That was also very rewarding, and they liked the story. They like the bravery of the rescuers, which again they could relate to.
That went on for quite a number of weeks. We ran that maybe 10 weeks for a term. We ran that story and developed it. They could tell the story back, and then they could tell their own stories.
Ross: What I found really interesting there, Anne, is that I've heard from teachers who also teach vulnerable people like refugees that usually take great care to avoid any sensitive topics with their students.
For example, even just things like talking about family, which is really common topic in the course book. You might want to avoid with groups like that because it's very likely that maybe someone in their family has died.
With your example, it sounds like you did the opposite. You really chose the book because it did involve talking about something that was sensitive but also relevant to the students.
Anne: They need to speak about it. What I would be very sensitive of, because this happened to me once in a formal Cambridge interview. When I was actually doing the interview, there was a pair of candidates, and I showed them a picture.
It was a picture of a beautiful little wooded glade, a beautiful little scene with kind of Greek pillars in it. They were asked to comment on it and reflect what they feel. One of the candidates simply got up and ran out of the room in terrible distress.
I paused the interview and told the supervisor, and then went on with the next candidates. Towards the end of the day, I found out that one of the candidates had been in a dreadful situation where she had seen an atrocity take place in a glade very similar to that.
That's always stayed in my mind, always, when dealing with traumatized students that you cannot predict what will trigger a response.
Ross: Something I noticed whenever I read anything aloud to students is that I tense is a grade whatever I'm reading as I'm reading it. Did you do anything like that when you were reading? How did you go about reading out the text out loud? Any tips there for teachers?
Anne: When I was reading aloud, I didn't do gapping or anything like that, especially with beginners. It was sentence by sentence and pausing. Ross, this is something I'm so keen on, is pausing.
This is coming from Silent Way but I was doing it before [laughs] I'd read about Silent Way ‑‑ to let the language sink in. People need time to process. I discovered that pretty early on in my teaching. I would always be quite measured and allow time. Just count to three in between sentences for that to sink in.
I might even just say "Everybody OK" or give a look or gesture, "Everybody OK with that?" before I would move on. If it's a live listening or an audio, especially audiotape, it's so difficult being deaf. One of the things I so need is to lip read as well. Students can benefit from that as well.
Ross: That's so interesting what you say about reading people's lips there, Anne. I found recently with going to meetings at work in Chinese that happened over the phone, I found those so much more difficult to understand than if it's a meeting that I'm in face to face.
It also must be the same for students and probably find listening to audio more difficult compared to a live reading or something.
Anne: You've hit the nail on the head, Ross. Absolutely. Knowing that this was one of the drawbacks of the audio lingual, that they couldn't see the speakers, they could only hear them.
I've even had deaf students in the class and I'm always very careful to face them or anybody who's maybe a wee bit slower to process language. It's a good thing to actually turn round to face them, maybe slow down, just a fraction, keeping it natural but slow down a fraction, and repeat, and check. Again, just that little nod, "Is that OK?" to check.
Ross: One more time, that was Anne Carmichael. For more about Anne, check out her website, tesoltrainingscotland.co.uk. Thank you again to Anne for joining us. If you'd like to find more of our podcast, please go to our website www.tefltraininginstitute.com. We'll see you again next time. Bye‑bye.